Gauteng healthcare workers unite for Gaza amid worsening humanitarian crisis

Scores of healthcare workers across some of the biggest hospitals in Gauteng participated in lunchtime pickets as they stood in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

The pickets, part of the Healthcare Workers for Palestine, have indicated that the public health crisis in Gaza continues to worsen, with increasing attacks on hospitals and healthcare facilities.

According to media reports, Gaza’s already compromised healthcare system is in a state of collapse, with blood banks reported to be running dry while Israeli forces continue targeting clinics and facilities housing patients and displaced families.

Al Jazeera reports that healthcare officials in parts of Gaza have been besieged, resulting in a severe shortage of blood as many would-be donors are too malnourished to help due to an Israeli-induced hunger crisis that has so far claimed the lives of 193 Palestinians, including five in the past 48 hours.

Speaking outside the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Muzzammil Tayob, a 5th-year medical student, said it is important for the world, including South Africans, to show their solidarity with the victims of genocide who are dying in their numbers in Gaza.

"We are here to show our solidarity with the people of Palestine. With the humanitarian crisis currently under way in Gaza, the situation is dire, with many describing it as being at a point of no return. What we are calling for is aid and entry of the healthcare team, the end of the blockade, and ultimately the dismantling of the Israeli apartheid regime in Palestine," he stated.

In Gauteng, these lunchtime pickets also took place outside other hospitals, including Rahima Moosa, Charlotte Maxeke Academic, as well as outside some of the hospitals in the Western Cape, as healthcare workers called for an end to the genocide and humanitarian crisis.

Recent reports indicate that more than three months of relentless shelling and fighting have pushed Gaza’s hospitals to the brink of collapse, creating a spiralling crisis of preventable deaths and permanent injury that is piling tragedy on top of the war’s skyrocketing death toll, currently over 24,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Nazreena Hassim, speaking on behalf of Healthcare Workers for Palestine in SA, said the country's healthcare professionals are deeply disturbed by the deliberate denial of food, water, and medical aid to a besieged population.

"We demand an end to this inhumane assault on life and dignity, and we urge the international community to act with urgency. We will not stay silent as our counterparts in Gaza face unspeakable conditions. Our oath to protect life knows no borders. We also remind fellow South Africans of the parallels we face.

"While Gaza starves from Israel's Weaponisation of Hunger, many South Africans go to sleep on an empty stomach, too. As healthcare workers, we cannot bear witness to Gaza without reflecting on the plight of South Africa's most vulnerable here at home," Hassim said.

Another healthcare worker, who did not want to be named, called on other healthcare workers and ordinary South Africans to join in raising the alarm over the humanitarian crisis in Palestine.

"We encourage other healthcare workers and our colleagues, including ordinary South Africans, to lend their voice in this fight against outright human oppression that is taking place in Gaza. It is disheartening to see children suffering under the cruelty of the Israeli regime," she stated.

According to the United Nations' World Food Program, a third of the population has been going days without food, while UN agencies and independent aid groups have accused Israel of not allowing enough aid into Gaza and warned of impending famine.

siyabonga.sithole@inl.co.za