cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/13712503

Desperate state of health system means unnecessary amputations being done on kids as young as 1, surgeon says

Before the war started in Gaza, Moustafa Ahmed Shehda would run around and play with his friends. Now, the 12-year-old is one of a growing number of Palestinians in the territory who’ve lost a limb in a bombing.

Moustafa is from Jabalia in northern Gaza, which has been hit particularly hard in the fighting. Early on in the war between Israel and Hamas, he was visiting his uncle when the apartment building was bombed.

“I was under the rubble. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t breathe,” Moustafa told Mohamed El Saife, a freelance journalist in Gaza working for CBC News.

His uncle was killed, and Moustafa was pulled from the rubble. Because of the extent of his injuries, his right leg had to later be amputated below the knee.

“Before the war, I used to play with my friends,” he said. “I can’t play because of my injury. I can’t play, and I don’t have friends, and I don’t have anything.”

Palestinian health officials said on Saturday that 26,257 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombing the small enclave of 2.3 million people in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas-led militants while nearly 65,000 have been wounded.

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    I couldn’t breathe," Moustafa told Mohamed El Saife, a freelance journalist in Gaza working for CBC News.

    Moustafa requires additional treatment for his leg, but his uncle in Rafah said it’s been a challenge getting him to a hospital in nearby Khan Younis.

    On Nov. 3, he, his wife, their children and his mother were sheltering at the Osama bin Zaid school, in the Al-Saftawi area north of Gaza City, when it was attacked by Israeli forces.

    Deirdre Nunan, a Canadian orthopedic surgeon from Saskatchewan, said she can’t stomach the idea of patients who lost a limb not receiving pain medicine.

    “The degree of pain, unmanaged post-operatively, would be absolutely unimaginable,” she said in an interview with CBC News from Afghanistan, where she is working with another non-governmental organization.

    Children can have a normal life after an amputation, Nunan said, but only if a number of conditions are met: The surgery must be done right away, and their limb must be pain free; there is no infection; they have access to good prosthetics; and they have all of the social, emotional and environmental support they need.

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