In the dim corridors of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, mobile phone torches are now as essential as stethoscopes for doctors doing rounds without functioning generators.
Fuel shortages are widespread in the besieged territory after more than 10 months of war, further restricting services at those hospitals that are still open.
Ayman Zaqout had a hard time even reaching the Kamal Adwan, located in Beit Lahia, because of Israeli strikes and evacuation orders.
Once admitted, he discovered he would be treated mostly in the dark.
“There was no electricity and I don’t know how they will be able to treat me in these circumstances,” he told AFPTV this week, grimacing from pain as he battled renal colic.
He was lucky to be treated at all.
Not long after he arrived, the hospital “stopped taking in patients” altogether, doctor Mahmoud Abu Amsha said, noting that “international organisations no longer supply it with the fuel needed for the generators”.
The fuel shortages could soon prove deadly, Abu Amsha said.
“Children in the incubators are threatened with cardiac arrest and death, and there are also seven cases in the intensive care unit, and they will die due to the fuel shortage,” he said.
