The healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has been ransacked amid the Israeli War on Gaza. The doctors and healthcare workers are, however, braving the bombardment and scarce supplies to treat the sick and wounded Palestinians.
With several hospitals becoming graveyards in the Gaza Strip, this poem has been penned by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, named Doctors Without Borders in English) Head of Missions for Gaza, Helen Ottens-Patterson, in honour of the healthcare workers who chose to stay back amid violence and provide medical care to thousands in need without care for their safety or well being.
Under fire and threat of armed expulsion
With little more than bare hands
You will learn how to keep alive
The world’s last living patient
Match the wristband with the consent paper
You read to your colleague the name ‘Hope’
She is bloodied and shrapnel punctured
Her limbs are somewhere under the rubble
Of Jabaliya
She is no longer whole
Yet she carries in her arms
The unborn
And the ghosts of Al Shifa
And the shattered hearts of the bereaved
And the empty hands of orphans
Tiny fingers
Seeking to curl themselves around
The hand they will always sense
But never know
And and and on and in into infinity
Yet she breathes
Because you will not leave your patient
It’s not because of medicine
Because you learned that
When the medicine runs out
When the blood banks run dry
When the gauze is deleted
When the light goes out
She still breathes
By your healing hands
By your resolve
To push your breath into her lungs
And stay by her side