Al Shifa is the biggest hospital in the Gaza Strip, but a years-long Israeli and Egyptian economic blockade and Palestinian political infighting between the militant Islamist group Hamas, which rules Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have left it strapped for resources.
Its emergency room treats 400 people a day in one large, rundown room with 11 beds and a chronic shortage of medicine.
Rolling blackouts leave it dependent on diesel-guzzling generators that run for more than 12 hours a day, and most departments have few lights and no air conditioning in the heat of summer. Advanced equipment lies unused and useless, crippled by a lack of spare parts.
"We lack equipment and we lack many types of medicine," said Ayman al Sohbani, the director of the ER. During Israel's January 2009 incursion into Gaza, he said, the facility was treating 300 additional patients a day, even after an Israeli air strike nearby blew out the hospitals' windows.
Israel charged at the time that Hamas fighters operated in and around the hospital and maintained a bunker below the building, an allegation that's never been proved or disproved.
This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon....
