As palliative care practitioners, our motivation is pushed by therapeutic, hope and customary humanity. Broadly outlined, palliative care is care — social, emotional, non secular and bodily — for an individual and their household affected by severe sickness and people on the finish of their life, and bereavement care after any individual has died. It goals to enhance dignity and high quality of life within the face of well being struggling.
Eight years in the past, we had been invited by healthcare colleagues in Gaza to collaborate to assist plans in direction of bettering palliative care. The previous dean of the medical faculty on the Islamic College of Gaza, Dr Fadel Naim, advised us, “I’ve the imaginative and prescient of coaching healers, not simply medical doctors.”
The director of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital — Gaza’s solely hospital for most cancers care — Dr Sobhi Skaik mentioned, “Our persons are in ache, we have to act.” Throughout visits to Gaza, we have now helped develop undergraduate palliative care coaching for medical college students on the college, and later a postgraduate palliative care diploma on the hospital.
On the finish of October this 12 months, we had been to have fun our first diploma graduates — together with medical doctors, pharmacists, physiotherapists, a psychologist and a nutritionist. The social gathering was deliberate with beautiful Palestinian meals and joyous singing. We had been to play the music “Insan (A human)” by Egyptian singer-songwriter Hamza Namira, with lyrics that symbolise to the scholars the essence of palliative care:
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A human being inside you and me
A human being who has a dream and an intention
Inside his coronary heart and within the depth of his eyes
He carries hope, dawn and life
A human being who loves and by no means hates
A human being who has hope for a greater tomorrow
How quickly these goals of therapeutic and hope have evaporated. Final week, the Islamic College of Gaza, a spot of studying, instructing and hopes for Gaza’s vibrant future medical doctors, was destroyed by Israeli strikes. Our palliative care college students and their academics have been scattered to the excessive winds, dropping possessions, properties and lives.
The house of the primary palliative care program for the poorest folks of Gaza, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, was this week destroyed in a horrific assault — Palestinian officers blame an Israeli airstrike; Israel says duty lies with a Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which has denied blame — that killed 471 folks, together with youngsters, healthcare workers, and displaced households looking for shelter.
The hospital, with its palliative care program, is not operational. The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital which cares for 9,000 most cancers and palliative care sufferers is on the verge of full shutdown owing to the blockade of gasoline and important medical provides.
Over the past 11 days, our colleagues have been reaching out to us intermittently by way of WhatsApp, through the transient intervals when telephones are charged.
Dr Khamis Elessi, a neurorehabilitation and ache drugs physician, and a champion of palliative care in Gaza, wrote, “I condemn killing of each variety, together with what occurred in Israel. However punish those that did it and never harmless civilians.” Subsequent to a photograph of a row of shrouded, lifeless youngsters, he captions, “I go away these pictures so that you can choose. We’re being exterminated on TV.”
Merrain Hammad, a nutritionist with plans to check most cancers care and vitamin in Malaysia, wrote of the directions to evacuate Gaza, “Could God stand by us. 4 days working from home to accommodate and ultimately from a metropolis to a different. Nowhere is secure.”
Rida Imad Almadhoon, a delicate nurse with an infectious snicker who labored at Al-Ahli Arab, messaged earlier than the hospital destruction, “I’m confined to the hospital the place I presently work and I can’t exit to see my household and even return house if it has stayed. Whoever leaves his place carries his soul on his palm.”
Suad Jameel Saleh Redwan, a talented physiotherapist in rehabilitation and palliative care, messaged, “It’s very painful when our kids hear robust bombs and we marvel whom we’ll lose. A mom’s eyes comprise her youngsters, and but can lose them in the identical second.”
Messages of concern and panic are giving technique to exhaustion and a grave resignation. Gazans are writing their very own eulogies.
Mahmoud Hammad Ihmedan Abu Saqer, a assured nurse who goes dewy-eyed when displaying pictures of his firstborn son, has been saying his farewells: “Perhaps these are our final hours. Perhaps we’re subsequent to God, so whoever carries one thing from us in his coronary heart, and to God, is nothing however a aid. Forgive us and pray for us.”
Wala Fathi Abu-Muaileq, a neatly dressed, caring nurse tells us, “The guts bleeds and the attention sheds tears over what it sees, however the thoughts thinks and is for certain that the subsequent scene is me.”
“We scent demise in each breath,” writes one other physician.
Suha Suleiman is a senior pharmacist advocating for entry to ache aid for Gaza’s most cancers sufferers. She just lately grew to become a proud grandmother. Suha tells us that three days in the past, her sister-in-law and 6 younger nieces and nephews had been killed by a missile. Suha says, “Gaza, the gorgeous metropolis which you knew and liked, has grow to be a metropolis of ghosts. All its buildings, streets, faculties, timber, fully destroyed. We’re with none life assist.”
She writes in previous tense — “The world grew to become blind and deaf to our struggling. We didn’t ask for greater than life with peace and dignity like all folks over the world. I had a home, I had a good friend, I had a spot, I had a tree, I had a chicken and a cat, I had a household, I had a quick homeland in a jail. It was known as Gaza.”
“What’s palliative care?” we at all times ask our Gazan palliative care college students. “Palliative care is humanity till infinity,” writes one.
Up to now 24 hours, the messages have fallen silent.
