In a searing address to the UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East and Gaza, American trauma surgeon Dr Feroze Sidhwa delivered a first-hand account of Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system, drawing from his two medical missions to Khan Younis.
“I am not here as a policymaker, but as a physician bearing witness to the deliberate destruction of healthcare, the targeting of my colleagues, and the erasure of a people,” he stated, describing surgeries performed on filthy floors without anaesthesia and children dying from preventable causes due to Israel’s blockade of medical supplies.
With haunting detail, he recounted treating pregnant women “whose pelvises had been obliterated and their foetuses cut in two”, and revealed that 83% of American medics in Gaza reported seeing children shot in the head or chest. “This is not system failure – it has been systematically dismantled through violations of international law,” he emphasised, condemning the man-made famine now killing more civilians than bombs.
His testimony peaked with the 18 March mass casualty event at Nasser Hospital, where 221 trauma patients arrived in one morning – 90 dead on arrival, nearly half children – an onslaught no besieged health system could withstand. “Parents memorise their children’s clothing to identify remains,” he said, exposing the war’s psychological toll: nearly half of Gaza’s children are now suicidal, asking, “Why didn’t I die with my family?”
Dr Sidhwa implored the Security Council to enforce seven measures, including an arms embargo, calling their inaction “a testament to collapsed conscience” as Gaza’s last doctors and a generation of Palestinians face annihilation. “You cannot claim ignorance,” he concluded, “when children no longer want to live.”
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Produced by: Aljazeera English
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