Gaza saves lives, but Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City has had to ration what it has for months after the alleged ceasefire.
It is commonly believed that both gauze and its English name are derived from Gaza and Arabic word meaning mixed silk, Chazz. Although perhaps apocryphal, the supposed connection testifies to the boon that a diminutive strip of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, wealthy in weaving traditionsassured humanity. As a wound dressing, gauze is a wonder for everyday apply. The loose weave, ironically, increases its durability so that it is able to absorb blood, secretions, pus and drainage without causing supersaturation and thus returning the material to the wound site.
The value of gauze is revealed in its absence. Bacteria like to hang out in puddles of body fluids. A stripped wound infected with bacteria will become infected. Then “the problem explodes,” says Nahreen Ahmed, a pulmonologist from Philadelphia who lived and worked in Al-Shifa. the largest hospital complex in the Gaza Stripfrom November 25 to December 11, 2025
The near shortage of gauze in the country where it was born means health care workers have no choice but to send patients home without it. These patients usually do not return to a sterile home. More than two years after Israel responded to the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, with a military ferocity that the International Association of Genocide Investigators stated that “meet the legal definition of genocide“, “there are tents in patients’ homes. In winter, many tents were flooded with dirty water. Infections that start at the wound site will spread to the bones and require amputation, which can be prevented. The problem is exacerbated by a similar shortage of antibiotics. “It started with gauze,” Ahmed reflects.
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Although there should be hospitals protected by international lawThe Israel Defense Forces (IDF) included them in a campaign of devastation that introduced the world to the neologism “domocide”, or the destruction of homes. According to the World Health Organization only 14 of 36 hospitals in the belt they work. Last summer, Israeli troops were killed over 1,700 health care workers; This still holds 220 people in custody. When the Israeli government announced in October that its forces would abide by a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza, who had endured two years of ruthless devastation, hoped for a return to normality. So did a network of foreign health workers, many of whom had previously crossed into Gaza at extreme physical risk.
These foreign doctors knew that their Palestinian colleagues faced an enormous task. A true ceasefire would be enough of a challenge for Gaza’s decimated health infrastructure. For two years, it had space exclusively for responding to crises caused by military attacks. A virtual end to the carnage will overwhelm remaining doctors with patients seeking care for everything that is not immediately life-threatening, from chronic diseases to common illnesses, all of which deepens Gaza’s devastation.
There was supposed to be enough gas. But seven foreign doctors and aid workers who volunteered in Gaza, including four who stayed there after a ceasefire was about to take effect, described a perverse situation in which Israel allows doctors into Gaza but not medical equipment, prompting several to smuggle necessary care tools into their personal belongings. The reality since October is that Gaza’s remaining doctors must cope with both an influx of patients requiring routine treatment AND a sustained, though reduced, rate of losses by the IDF, all without key supplies. Doctors told WIRED that the public health crisis they witnessed reminded them more of a fresh phase of genocide than its aftermath. In this phase, Israelis no longer need to open fire to kill Palestinians, although they still do so. (In a statement to WIRED, Israeli occupation authorities, known as the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, said they “continue to facilitate the import of medical equipment and medicines in line with requests from international organizations.”)
“The war is not over,” says an international doctor who spoke to WIRED from Al-Shifa and who requested anonymity for fear of Israeli retaliation. “The victims are not what they were before. These are isolated cases, but they are still happening.” This happens with intensity as Israeli soldiers notice Palestinians crossing a poorly defined “yellow line” into IDF-occupied Gaza territory. “All the people who are hurt, the people who are dying – all of it falls within this arbitrary yellow line.”
From the declaration of the ceasefire until mid-February, Israel killed over 600 peoplewhich brings the official death toll reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health to over 72,000, or probably underestimated. Although Israel partially reopened the Rafah crossing earlier this month, within two weeks Israel allowed departure of only 260 of the more than 18,500 people in desperate need of medical care that is no longer available in Gaza. according to the United Nations. Just as ominously, during this period Al Jazeera reported that Israel had allowed this to happen only 269 people returned to Gazaraising fears that those leaving will never be able to return home.
Palestine is eminent for providing Israel and its allies with, among others, laboratory for the weapon of the future, from AI-based targeting Down quadcopter drones are stable enough shoot a gun. Meanwhile, there is a “civil war” in the remaining hospitals in Gaza. [era] medicine,” Ahmed said. To help, foreign doctors are smuggling 9-volt batteries, cochlear implants and Tylenol, putting themselves at risk of being kicked out of Gaza. Perhaps most important is smuggling gauze.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: JOAN WONG; Original photographs: Nahreen Ahmed
International medical workers he began traveling to Gaza shortly after Israel laid siege to it. To get to Gaza, doctors, nurses and other aid workers flew to Cairo and traveled by caravan across the Sinai Peninsula to the Rafah border crossing. Egyptians allowed Israeli inspections of trucksostensibly to prevent arms smuggling, which has slowed the flow of aid as much as possible. Mark Perlmutter, a hand surgeon from North Carolina who first visited Gaza in spring 2024, recalls seeing rows of 18-wheelers “30 miles long, bumper to bumper” filled with food – “dead chickens, rotting vegetables” – idling, as former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant promised that “no electricity, no food, no fuel”will be allowed into Gaza.