Utility shortages in Gaza “are going to kill many, many people,” said Avril Benoît, executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also known as Doctors Without Borders.
Benoît told CNN that it often loses contact with its team in the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza due to lack of electricity, inability to charge phones and cell signal often being cut out, making it “difficult to get real-time information.”
“What we do know is our medical coordinator was warning that the fuel was reaching catastrophic lows,” she said.
Benoît added that there is a lack of painkillers, something which she said has “been going on for quite a time.”
“There’s a real shortage of anesthesia. And again, those surgical teams are going to have to ration. They are going to have to choose who gets it and who doesn’t, who gets the lifesaving surgery, who doesn’t," she said.
People in Gaza are “exhausted, including the medical teams who have been working around the clock,” Benoît said. “Everyone is dehydrated, malnourished, hungry,” she said. “It’s really a difficult circumstance in which to be able to even focus on a mass casualty response that’s needed.”
“It’s absolutely life or death at this point. Hour by hour it’s essential for that humanitarian assistance to be brought in,” Benoît continued. “We are deeply concerned for the fate of everyone who happens to be in Gaza right now, where nowhere is safe,” CNN reports.
