Looking for Trouble

Guest blog from Gerri Haynes in Gaza: Day 2 the work begins

For the next 9 days, Gerri Haynes will be sending back reports from inside blockaded Gaza. As she did last year, Gerri has organized a Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility delegation of doctors and other health care providers to work in hospitals and clinics in Gaza in an effort to directly help the people there and to bring attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that the Israeli blockade has created.

Working today in Gaza. In clinics and schools and in operating rooms, we are hearing from the people of Gaza about life under siege.

Pictured here: Debra Goff, oncology nurse from Seattle, who is consulting with the oncology team at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and witnessing people who will die early for lack of the supplies deemed essential for current cancer care.

While the work for patients diagnosed with cancer is heroic, the treatment center lacks pain medicines, nutritional supplies, chemotherapeutic agents and radiation treatment facilities.

The presence of a cardiologist, a neurosurgeon, two urologists, a psychiatrist, and an orthopedic surgeon in our delegation was advertised in the local paper. People of Gaza are self-referring to be seen while we are here and the list of surgeries to be done in the next week is growing.

In the classes I taught at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme today, we talked about the ongoing nature of traumatic stress – calling this “Continuous Traumatic Stress Injury”, rather than “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

Resilience and care for each other from their community are essential parts of a society that is in a daily struggle to survive.

Personnel from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme are providing ongoing assistance in refining our schedule for this visit – as new opportunities to meet and serve arise.