US doctors held captive in Gaza appeal for aid from Washington in returning to the states.
Kattan, who is a doctor specializing in anesthesia and critical care, has been staying at Gaza's European Hospital in the city of Rafah recently. She is one of at least 22 American doctors stranded in Gaza following the closure of the area's critical border crossing to Egypt due to an Israeli attack on Rafah. The crossing was previously the only option for aid workers to enter and exit Gaza.
"My children have already been texting me today saying you said Tuesday that you were coming home. WHO (World Health Organization) is trying to negotiate a safe exit for us, but it's not working." Kattan spoke to CNN.
The border has been shuttered since last week when the Israeli military seized it. The Israeli and Egyptian officials have been unsuccessful in reaching an agreement to reopen it, instead pointing fingers at each other for the continued closure. As a result, many foreign doctors remain trapped in Gaza, while others cannot enter because of deteriorating conditions within the embattled territory.
The American non-profit organization, FAJR Scientific, is now urging the US government to facilitate the safe exit of the medical team that Kattan is part of. The group was originally meant to depart on Monday.
"I'm asking the US government to intervene and collaborate with the WHO to protect US citizens stuck in a war zone and have them come home as soon as possible," said Mosab Nasser, the head of FAJR Scientific, also in Gaza.
According to FAJR Scientific, one of the team members requires evacuation for medical reasons. The medical staff includes 12 Americans, three British citizens, one Omani, and one Egyptian.
Kattan and her spouse, who is also a doctor, arrived in Gaza around two weeks ago, motivated by the sense of helplessness they felt witnessing the suffering in Gaza on television and knowing they could be of help.
"We were well aware that anesthesiologists were needed by the civilians here, particularly women and children. We knew we could make a difference," Kattan explained.
"This is what clean means in Gaza"
The FAJR Scientific team provided CNN with a series of first-hand accounts and videos recorded at the European Hospital in Gaza.
Laura Swoboda, a Wisconsin nurse practitioner and wound specialist, described the nature of the danger outside the hospital in one video. "Even when we feel safe, the war is still ongoing, and there's the potential for violence to flare up again," Swoboda said.
The perilous situation is not limited to the outside hospital environment.
"We didn't expect how dire the situation was here. There wasn't any soap for washing our hands between infected wounds with maggots. There weren't any sanitizer wipes to clean the tables after each treatment," Swoboda shared with CNN during an interview conducted on Zoom.
"We're out of gauze to clean the wounds. We're out of advanced dressings, we've emptied all of our cleansers, we're using whatever we can find at this point."
In another clip, Kattan shows the condition of the operating room, revealing plastic overalls lying on the operating table. "This is what clean means in Gaza," she said.
Kattan was preparing for an operation to treat the amputations of a quadruple-amputee. She described how the medical staff managed to bring one single vial of Propofol from the US into Gaza.
No options for leaving
FAJR Scientific operates as part of WHO, which the organization claims has been facilitating evacuation events.
Meanwhile, another international medical group is currently present at the European Hospital, organized by the Palestine American Medical Association. The PAMA mission consists of 19 medical professionals, ten of whom are US citizens.
For the FAJR Scientific mission members, the risks of traveling to a war zone were well known. However, getting stuck in Gaza was not a scenario they had considered.
Kattan struggles between the urge to return to her kids and the guilt she feels for potentially abandoning her Gaza colleagues amid escalating violence and the increasing need for medical assistance.
"It's simply missing my kids and waking up in the morning to discover they're not physically here with me. But the harder part is realizing that I'll make it home safely, while many citizens in Gaza face even worse living conditions," she said.
After more than two weeks of seeing the distressing pressure on one of the few remaining operational hospitals in southern Gaza, Kattan and her associates want to leave only if they can be replaced by new medical personnel.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) is also advocating for the safe return of the stranded medical team, which includes doctors from various countries, including the United States, to their home nations. Despite the efforts of organizations like WHO and FAJR Scientific, the middleeast, specifically Gaza, continues to face challenging medical circumstances due to the closure of critical border crossings and the lack of necessary resources.
Source: edition.cnn.com
