Chaotic scenes

"We cannot cope": Palestinian doctor describes chaotic scenes inside Gaza's largest hospital

From CNN's Vasco Cotovio and Abeer Salman

The head of surgery at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza — the enclave’s largest — says staff at the facility “cannot cope” with the huge number of patients they are treating, as he shared video of the chaotic scenes inside the hospital’s emergency ward. 

The video he recorded and sent to CNN shows several rows of patients lining both sides of a hospital corridor, some on stretchers, others simply lying on the floor. 

“This is the yellow area of our emergency department at the Shifa medical complex. Injured people there, there, there…,” Dr. Marwan Sai’ida says as he pans the camera, covering the entire length of the corridor. “[We are] overrun with patients, huge number of injured people.”

Like most specialists at the hospital, he says he is now just working in the emergency ward to help treat the many wounded that continue to arrive. 

“[It is] difficult to cope with this situation, this is horrible, the staff cannot cope with this huge number of injured people,” he says, “There’s no more space.”

Sai’ida, who is also the head of International Cooperation at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, says there are currently 8,000 people at the hospital, and called on global leaders to act to end the war.