Britain opens its first field hospital in Gaza

Once fully built, the mobile clinic will be able to handle at least 250 patients a day, according to UK-Med, a medical NGO

The first UK-funded field hospital in the Gaza Strip is being set up and will soon be able to provide services from basic healthcare to surgical procedures.
The tented hospital was dispatched from Manchester, and arrived a few days ago in Gaza. Once fully built, it will be able to handle at least 250 patients a day, according to UK-Med, a medical NGO.
Our field hospital has arrived in #Gaza. Already, our team of medics in Gaza are seeing nearly 200 patients per day at their self-built hospital. The field hospital will add to this, enabling us to treat at least 250 people per day with additional surgical capacity. pic.twitter.com/apmY8HETiD
International doctors and nurses, including many from the UK, will help at the hospital.
This new field hospital will replace a temporary facility previously set up by UK-Med, which has already been handling about 100 patients a day.
That was built with local timber from destroyed buildings while trucks were held up at the border.
🛠🏥Using timber from destroyed buildings, our medics in #Gaza have constructed a makeshift hospital – built in only 10 days – to treat the ill and injured, while waiting for the UK-Med field hospital to arrive. The team are seeing more than 100 patients per day at this facility. pic.twitter.com/PJvfyhA8Km
“The scale of the need is simply staggering,” UK-Med’s chief executive David Wightwick told the BBC.
“There are very few services of any kind and the health services have been eroded to the extent that if you are sick, if you are ill, if you are wounded, you are in a very difficult situation.”
UK-Med has also already been operating five mobile health clinics on routes going north of Rafah, dubbed “GPs on wheels,’ offering primary care.
So far, these mobile clinics have already seen more than 1,200 patients, though many more require care in the besieged Gaza Strip, bombarded as the Israel-Hamas war rages into a sixth month.
UK-Med has also dispatched a surgical team to help at Al-Aqsa Hospital, the only remaining functioning hospital in Gaza. Together, more than 530 surgical procedures have been performed so far, with about a quarter of them on injured children under the age of 18.
Mr Wightwick said that there are also cases of acute malnutrition in very young children.
Basic necessities such as food and water have been hard to come by given constant clashes between Israel and Hamas throughout the Strip. Aid convoys, too, have been attacked by the Israeli military.
Some air drops of supplies have occurred, but relief organisations have said this is an imperfect solution, as it’s hard to control exactly where packages fall – where they land may not always be in close proximity to those most in need.
Humanitarian organisations have been warning of the catastrophic conditions in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, the most southern point, where about 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced.
Rafah is the last remaining refuge as Israel-Hamas battles have pushed Palestinians from other parts of the Strip further south to the border with Egypt.
Egypt, however, has not allowed refugees to cross en masse, with Cairo instead emphasising the need for Palestinians to remain on their land in Gaza.
Israel has in recent weeks continually vowed to bombard Rafah, claiming it the last Hamas stronghold that needs to be extinguished. But many nations have urged Israel to reconsider its plans, given how many people fled to Rafah given the ravages of war.
If the Israeli military moves ahead with its Rafah offensive, the UK-Med’s field hospital will likely be key in providing emergency healthcare.