An American surgeon has sounded the alarm on the catastrophic conditions inside Gaza’s hospitals, where wounded Palestinians are dying not from the severity of their injuries—but from the lack of basic medical supplies.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a trauma surgeon from North Carolina, has just returned from a three-week humanitarian mission to Gaza, where he worked in Al-Aqsa and Nasser hospitals under the World Health Organization’s emergency response network. He says the situation is beyond desperate.
“We’re operating without soap, antibiotics, or x-ray machines,” Perlmutter said. “This isn’t a warzone hospital—it’s a place where people are left to die slowly.”
He described harrowing scenes, including the case of a 15-year-old girl hit by Israeli helicopter fire while riding her bicycle. “Her limbs were shredded. She came in alone—no backpack, no weapon. Just a child,” he recalled. “She’ll be lucky to keep three limbs.”
Another teen boy was brought in after an Israeli strike on his vehicle, which killed his grandmother on the spot. The boy lost his foot, needed extensive vascular repair, and had to undergo amputation due to gangrene in his hand. “He may not survive,” Perlmutter added.
Both cases, he said, were caused by Israeli Apache gunships targeting civilians. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) maintains that it only targets military threats and operates under international law, adding that it has not received adequate information to investigate the incidents in question.
But the situation is not just about injuries—it’s about a complete breakdown of medical infrastructure. “Al-Aqsa hospital is a tenth the size of any trauma center in North Carolina,” Perlmutter said. “And it was expected to treat hundreds of mass-casualty patients in a single day—with nothing. Patients died who would have survived elsewhere.”
Israel closed all border crossings into Gaza on March 2, halting the entry of food, medicine, and equipment. This came after Hamas rejected a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal. As of now, medical supplies are rotting at the border, and expired medicine is being discarded while children bleed out on operating tables.
Perlmutter emphasized the heroism of local Palestinian doctors and nurses. “They work nonstop. Many haven’t been paid. They leave their own families behind to treat strangers. And when we go home, they go back to overcrowded tents—50 people in spaces meant for 20, sharing a single toilet.”
The UN’s top humanitarian official, Tom Fletcher, recently called the situation “dire,” urging the international community to act. “If humanitarian law still matters, it’s time to prove it,” Fletcher said.
With over 15,000 children reportedly killed in Gaza since the war began, and more than 900 deaths since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, Perlmutter warns the worst is yet to come: “If another mass casualty event hits, we will lose even more people—not from wounds, but from the world’s failure to act.”
