Al-Ahli Hospital ‘was never designed for mass casualty events’

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Dr Mohammed Mustafa, an emergency physician who left Gaza just days ago, tells Al Jazeera that Al-Ahli Hospital is very small and was never designed to handle mass casualties.

Mustafa, who was working at the hospital, said when Al-Shifa Hospital was destroyed, it forced Al-Ahli Hospital to become the focal hospital in Gaza City.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Amman, Jordan, he said when he was at al-Ahli, they could have up to 150 patients arriving at once.

“The emergency department that’s just been destroyed is a 5×15 metre department, it’s very, very small,” he said, adding that it was the only emergency department “functioning for almost close to a million people living in the area”.

He said his colleagues had told him the pharmacy had also been destroyed, as had the blood bank and that one child with traumatic brain injury who was on a ventilator died because the medical staff did not have enough time to get an oxygen cylinder before Israeli forces struck the hospital.

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