facility:shifa hospital

  • Killed Palestinian woman laid to rest in Gaza
    Jan. 12, 2019 4:28 P.M. (Updated : Jan. 12, 2019 4:28 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=782243

    GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Palestinian crowds marched, Saturday noon, in the funeral of Amal Mustafa Taramsi , 43, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces during protests at the eastern borders of the besieged Gaza Strip, on Friday afternoon.

    Hundreds of Palestinians, alongside head of the Hamas movement’s politburo, Ismail Haniyeh, and several other movement leaders took part in the funeral.

    The funeral procession set off from the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City towards her home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood before burial at the neighborhood’s cemetery.

    More than 25 Palestinians were injured during Friday protests with live bullets, rubber-coated steel bullets while dozens of others suffered tear-gas inhalation.

    Two journalists and a paramedic were among injuries, while a Palestinian ambulance was also targeted by Israeli forces.

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    Updated : Soldiers Kill One Woman, Injure 25 Palestinians, Including A Medic and Two Journalists, In Gaza
    January 11, 2019 4:46 PM
    http://imemc.org/article/soldiers-injure-kill-one-woman-injure-14-palestinians-including-a-medic-in-ga

    The Palestinian Health Ministry said the slain Palestinian woman has been identified as Amal Mustafa at-Taramisi , 43, from Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza city.

    It added that the woman was shot in her head, and died from her serious wounds shortly after she was injured.

    #Palestine_assassinée #marcheduretour

  • Polluted water leading cause of child mortality in Gaza, study finds -

    With 43 Olympic swimming pools worth of sewage water flowing from Gaza toward Israel and Egypt daily, researchers say local epidemic is only a matter of time
    By Yaniv Kubovich Oct 16, 2018
    0comments Print Zen

    https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium.MAGAZINE-polluted-water-a-leading-cause-of-gazan-child-mortality-s

    Illness caused by water pollution is a leading cause of child mortality in the Gaza Strip, says a study by the RAND Corporation, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz.
    The study shows that water pollution accounts for more than a quarter of illnesses in Gaza and that more than 12 percent of child deaths up until four years ago was linked to gastrointestinal disorders due to water pollution. Since that time these numbers have continued to grow.
    The collapse of water infrastructure has led to a sharp rise in germs and viruses such as rotavirus, cholera and salmonella, the report says.

    The data appear in a study by Dr. Shira Efron, a special adviser on Israel and policy researcher at RAND’s Center for Middle East Public Policy; Dr. Jordan Fishbach, co-director of the Water and Climate Resilience Center at RAND; and Dr. Melinda Moore, a senior physician, policy researcher and associate director of the Population Health Program at RAND.
    The researchers based their study on previous cases in the world in which wars and instability created a water crisis and hurt infrastructure, such as in Iraq and Yemen, where mortality has been on the rise and other health problems have surfaced. In the period studied, they collected material from various officials in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

    The emergency department at Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza, March 29, 2017. MOHAMMED SALEM/REUTERS
    The RAND Corporation is an apolitical American non-profit that advises governments and international organizations on formulating public policy.

    Gaza’s water crisis dates back more than a few years. The Israeli company Mekorot began supplying water to the territory in the 1980s. But since Hamas’ rise to power and the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the repetitive fighting since Operation Cast Lead at the turn of 2009 have significantly worsened the situation.
    Today 97 percent of drinking water in the Strip is not drinkable by any recognized international standard. Some 90 percent of residents drink water from private purifiers, because the larger installations have been damaged by fighting or have fallen into disuse since they couldn’t be maintained. The current situation, according to the study, is that Gaza is incapable of supplying enough water for its 2 million inhabitants.

    • Despite the high risk for a cholera outbreak in Gaza due to the polluted sewage system, researchers at first estimated it wasn’t possible to determine when and if such an epidemic would occur, since the residents are immunized. But a short time before they published their findings, the Trump administration announced a halt to funding for UNRWA, reversing these conclusions. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East), regularly inoculates 1.3 million residents of Gaza and gets 4 million doctors’ visits in the territory. Efron said that without a proper alternative to UNRWA’s health aid, it’s only a matter of time before an epidemic occurs.

      “It may reach the level of a humanitarian disaster,” she said.

      In their report, the researchers recommend the urgent establishment of a joint team of Israeli, Egyptian, and Palestinian Authority officials to prepare for the possible outbreak of an epidemic.

      They said that while global discourse is focused on difficult illnesses and their long-term ramifications, the real urgency is to deal with infectious disease caused by drinking water and sewage.

      “They must think about immediate-term solutions that could stabilize the situation. To think that it will stay on the other side of the fence is to bury your head in the sand,” Efron said.

      “Gaza sewage is already affecting Israel, viruses traced to Gaza have been diagnosed in Israel in the past,” she said. “If the situation isn’t dealt with, it may unfortunately be just a matter of time before Israel and Egypt find themselves facing a health crisis because of Gaza.”

      Efron says this is a resolvable crisis and the obstacles are mainly political. “Although the debate about Gaza turns mainly on mutual recriminations over who is responsible, it’s not in the interest of any player for an epidemic to erupt. It’s a human-made crisis and it has technical solutions, but the obstacles are political.”

      Therefore, she says, it was important for the team to point out the relatively simple and technical means that could be employed from this moment to avoid a regional health crisis.

      With regard to the Gaza electricity crisis, the researches propose the use of solar energy. “It’s a relatively cheap solution, accessible and it could be run from private homes, clinics and schools – and it would not require the continued reliance on diesel fuel,” they wrote.

      They also recommended that the diesel fuel that does get into Gaza be supplied straight to the hospitals, where it should be used for examinations and life-saving treatment.

      “We are referring to energy solutions, water and the health system which go beyond the assurances of emergency supplies of diesel fuel,” she said. “It’s important in and of itself, but far from sufficient. At the same time, funding and support for large projects involving desalination, sewage purification, electricity lines, and solar energy must be sought, as the international community is trying to do. But while working on projects whose overall costs will be in the billions of dollars, and which will take years to complete, entailing the agreement of all involved parties – who cannot seem to agree on anything – immediate solutions must also be sought.”

  • ’NY Times’ uses old tricks to distort Israel’s latest attacks on #Gaza
    https://mondoweiss.net/2018/07/distort-israels-attacks

    Les vieilles ficelles du #New_York_Times, pro-#Israël #indécent,

    Falsifier la chronologie des événements,

    Distort the timeline to try and blame the Palestinians. The Times recounts yesterday’s latest news: Israeli airstrikes that killed 2 Gazans and mortar fire from Gaza that wounded 4 Israelis. But the paper nowhere mentions that 5 days earlier, on July 9, Israel had further choked off cargo shipments into Gaza, a territory which was already under a punishing blockade — a drastic act that any neutral observer might have concluded contributed greatly to the latest escalation.

    Insister sur les victimes israéliennes,

    Spend more time on Israeli victims than on Palestinian ones. Today’s online article has 6 full paragraphs on Israelis in the town of Sderot who were hurt by rockets or mortars. Three different Israelis were quoted, including one, Refael Yifrah, who said, “It’s better to be in Gaza where they get warning that they’re going to be fired upon in one neighborhood or another and they evacuate. . . Here, there’s an alert, no one knows where it going to land.”

    By contrast, the Times cited only one Palestinian by name, even though the paper has two reporters in Gaza City. The Times did report that Muhammad Abdelaal, a 30-year-old, “was interviewed at Shifa Hospital while soaked with blood and being treated for his wounds” — but, unlike the Israelis, he apparently didn’t say anything quotable.

    Présenter les déclarations non vérifiées des autorités israéliennes comme des faits avérés,

    Don’t challenge Israel’s framing of the events. The Times headline calls yesterday’s exchange the “Most Intense Fighting Since 2014 War” — without quotation marks. In fairness, the first sentence of the report does make clear that the “most intense” assessment comes straight from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Israeli soldiers have shot dead at least 137 Gazans in the months-long Great March of Return and wounded more than 4000. Israeli snipers murdering un- or barely-armed protesters hardly qualifies as “fighting,” but it has certainly been more “intense” than yesterday’s events. Clearly Netanyahu wanted to distract world attention from those 137 dead Palestinians, and the thousands more wounded — and the New York Times let him get away with it.

  • Gaza father’s cry of grief: ’Wake up baby’ | Middle East Eye
    Mohammed Omer | Tuesday 13 October 2015 |Last update: Thursday 15 October 2015

    (...) What a night

    “We were woken up in the night by the house shaking as a first missile hit nearby. My wife Noor shouted out, ’What is happening!’ as I got up from the bed."

    Yahya told his wife he would go and see what was happening, and then everything - water tank, the walls, and roof started falling on top of them.

    “I could hear my daughter Rahaf screaming “Papa come, take me out, stones are on my head!” he recalls, in tears.

    Rahaf’s voice was silenced by the next Israeli missile and he stumbled round to see his pregnant wife bleeding on the floor.

    Yahya says he felt powerless, unable to reach his daughter whose voice was still calling out for him. He still feels powerless as his two-year-old son lies injured and having recently woken from a brief coma.

    An ambulance crew member said he arrived at the scene, not sure where to look. The father was then unconscious at that point, unable to tell him how many people were in the house to look for.

    Local boys try to retrieve family possessions following the Israeli airstrike on the home of Yahya and Noor Hassan on Sunday (MEE/Mohammad Asad)

    8am at hospital

    In the morning at the hospital, Yahya Hassan asked his relatives about his wife and his daughter. In an attempt to save him pain, they lied and said his wife and children were still alive on a ward.

    But Yahya insisted they take him in a wheelchair to see them at Shifa hospital.

    “The doors of the morgue opened and there were my wife and daughter - dead - they were dead,” he screams out in tears.

    AN uncle kisses the head of Rahaf Hassan in the morgue in Gaza, following her death in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday (MEE/Mohammad Asad)

    “Wake up baba, wake up, wake up,” the father calls to his daughter in the cold morgue.

    Yahya Hassan lived in a rural area among farmers in Zaytoun, east Gaza City. Everyone says this area was no threat to Israel as farmers rise early and go to bed early after a working day.

    Israel’s official response was that missiles were targeting “two Hamas weapon manufacturing facilities”.

    Hussam Hassan, a cousin of Yahya, responded to Israel’s allegations by stating that they were never a security threat to Israel, just a community of poor farmers growing vegetables for the local market.

    “Are those toys weapons against Israel?” asks Hussam while holding some children in torn clothes carrying old torn toys.

    Yahya asks: “Why does Israel kill our wives and daughters? What sin have they committed?” as he recalls the final moments before they went to bed, when Rahaf was asking her dad to play games, before going to sleep.

    Unable to move, due to deep shrapnel wounds in his legs - he knows there is nothing left for him, of Rahaf, except memories and a doll, among the ruins of stones.

    “Israel destroyed my life… in a blink of an eye, they took my wife, my daughter, unborn child, my home, and my son traumatised forever,” says the crying father to MEE.

    A crater left by the Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday that killed a toddler and mother (MEE/Mohammad Asad)

    Yahya Hassan does not know what the future holds, but all those offering condolences know that he will have to join the ranks of thousands more homeless families, waiting for simple construction materials to reach Gaza to rebuild after Israel’s routine military attacks.

    For those on the scene on Monday it was heart-breaking to see the young father begging to hold his dead three-year-old daughter one last time, just for a few more seconds.

    Yahya Hassan is left unable to explain to his two-year-old son why his mum is gone. He saw her cold body and unresponsive face, and no-one can explain why he can’t play with sister Rahaf anymore.

    http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/wake-daddy-928391543#sthash.xshkkZHD.dpuf

  • Two injured in Israeli bombing raid over #Gaza
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/israel-calls-release-palestinian-prisoners

    Israeli war jets launched an aerial assault on Gaza early Friday, injuring two people including a one-year-old. Gaza health ministry officials cited by Palestinian news agency Ma’an said an infant and a 30-year-old man were treated for shrapnel wounds at Shifa hospital in Gaza’s southern al-Maghraqa region. The report added that #Israel targeted 10 sites in Gaza, including a washing machine factory in the Jabaliya refugee camp, a metal shop in the same area, and two “Hamas sites” south of Gaza city. read more

    #Palestine #Top_News

  • Gaza Cancer Rates on Rise
    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/cancer-rates-soar-gaza-war.html

    Dr. Khalid Thabet, head of the Oncology Department at the government-run Shifa Hospital, said in a meeting with Al-Monitor that he expects the rate of cancer patients to double over the next five years in the Gaza Strip, due to the uranium used by Israel in its attacks against the Gaza Strip during the 2008-2009 war.
    While Israel denied in Jan. 2009 that it had used depleted uranium in its offensive in the Gaza Strip, an investigation by French NGO Action of Civilians for Nuclear Disarmament (ACDN) shortly after the war found the use of depleted uranium “highly probable.”

    "After several months of investigation carried out in close liaison with the people concerned and with the help of Jean-François Fechino, a consultant on diffuse pollution and an expert accredited to the UN Environment Program (UNEP). ACDN ... produced a 33-page report concluding that the presence of dozens of tonnes of Depleted Uranium (perhaps as much as 75 tonnes) in the soil and subsoil of Gaza is highly probable.

    “In April 2009, a four-person mission including Jean-François Fechino went to Gaza under the auspices of the Arab Commission for Human Rights. The samples of earth and dust that they brought back from Gaza were then analysed by a specialist laboratory, which found in them elements of depleted uranium (which is radioactive, carcinogenic, teratogenic), particles of cesium (which is radioactive and carcinogenic), asbestos dust (which is carcinogenic), volatile organic compounds (VOCs, which are fine particles which endanger health, especially the health of children, asthmatics and old people), phosphates (from oxidation of white phosphorus), tungsten (which is carcinogenic), copper, aluminium oxide (which is carcinogenic), and thorium oxide (ThO2, which is radioactive).”