Details about MSF activities throughout Palestine in response to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Palestine 2024 © MSF
With a team of surgical and emergency staff, logisticians, and coordinators, our teams are providing Palestinians in Gaza with surgical and wound care, physiotherapy, postpartum care, primary health care, vaccination, and mental health services, in addition to critical water and sanitation activities. However, extremely volatile conditions on the ground, including systematic sieges of health facilities and evacuation orders, have forced us to continually adapt our operations.
Nasser Hospital is now the largest surgical center in Gaza, as Al-Shifa Hospital is no longer functioning. MSF staff were forced to flee the facility and leave patients behind after a shell struck the hospital in mid-February 2024 and Israeli forces ordered its evacuation before raiding it.
In mid-May, following the evacuation order of the Rafah Indonesian Hospital due to Israel’s Rafah offensive, MSF relaunched operations in Nasser in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, focusing on orthopedic surgery, burn unit, plastic surgery, general laboratory activities, physiotherapy, and the counseling department.
We are currently working in the trauma/ortho//burn unit (TOBU) of Nasser Hospital and are running two operation rooms with 65 inpatient beds. We are also running a daycare surgery service three days per week for trauma and burn patients requiring small interventions that require anesthesia but not hospitalization for more than one day due to a lack beds in the inpatient department and the high bed occupancy rate since July 2024. We also manage an outpatient department for wound care, providing dressings and physiotherapy sessions for burn and trauma cases.
MSF also supports mother and child care at Nasser, including two pediatric wards and an outpatient department; delivery, pre- and postpartum wards; pediatric intensive care unit (PICU); newborn intensive care unit (NICU); pediatric and maternity emergency rooms; and mental health care. Nasser’s maternity ward is one of the only ones still functioning in southern Gaza.
In mid-June, MSF opened an inpatient therapeutic feeding center for malnourished children.
MSF staff are providing outpatient services including general consultations, vaccination, reproductive health care, dressing, mental health services, and health promotion. The primary health care center includes a 24/7 emergency room to stabilize and refer trauma patients. It also provides malnutrition screenings and an outpatient therapeutic feeding center.
MSF is supporting the Culture and Free Thought Association (CFTA) in providing pre- and postnatal care as well as sexual and reproductive health care. We provide general consultations, management of non-communicable diseases, malnutrition screening and treatment, dressings, and physiotherapy. The most common illnesses and injuries seen in patients in Al-Mawasi include upper respiratory infections, acute diarrhea, skin diseases, and hypertension.
MSF provides outpatient consultations, vaccination, mental health, outpatient therapeutic feeding center, midwife and sexual and reproductive health care services, wound care, physiotherapy, and health promotion. Given the massive influx of displaced people from Rafah into an already packed humanitarian zone, and the lack of health facilities to cover trauma needs, we are currently expanding our activities to include a lightweight emergency service focused on stabilizing and referring complex cases while managing simpler cases.
Al-Attar primary health care center addresses the needs of displaced people who have set up tents in the area, offering services such as general medicine, pediatric consultations, vaccination, emergency health care, wound care, prenatal and postnatal care, mental health care, health promotion, malnutrition screening, outpatient therapeutic feeding center, and other services.
At Al Qarara, MSF supports PalMed, a diaspora-based Palestinian medical organization, with medications, incentives and running costs, to provide sexual and reproductive health care and general medical consultations including for wound dressing, skin infections, non-communicable diseases, and other needs.
MSF staff are providing outpatient services including general consultations, vaccination, reproductive health care, dressing, mental health services, and health promotion. The primary health care center includes a 24/7 emergency room to stabilize and refer trauma patients. It also provides malnutrition screenings and an outpatient therapeutic feeding center.
MSF began working at Al-Aqsa Hospital on November 26, 2023. On January 6, 2024, our teams had to evacuate Al-Aqsa due to fighting around the premises and evacuation orders that made MSF’s pharmacy store inaccessible. On February 6, MSF team returned to Al-Aqsa and prepared the premises for a return to previous activities, and the following day, wound and rehabilitation care resumed. Since then, the team has been providing acute trauma surgery, advanced wound care, post-operative wound care, physiotherapy, health promotion, and mental health support. Access to the pharmacy store has also been re-established. Activities also include malnutrition screening and referral.
Our team provides wound care, mental health, health promotion, physiotherapy, and malnutrition screening activities at Al Martyrs Primary Health Care Center.
MSF opened a new primary health care center in Al Hekker to provide outpatient services including general consultations, vaccination, reproductive health services, wound dressing, minor surgery, health promotion, and mental health services such as psychological first aid, individual and family sessions, and psychoeducation. Services also include malnutrition screening and an outpatient therapeutic feeding center.
As a response to the destruction of the health system in Gaza, MSF teams opened a field hospital in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. The emergency department, outpatient department, inpatient department, and operation theater are operating with a 28-bed capacity.
The modular field hospital opened with outpatient activities and will expand its capacity from 20 beds to 110 beds, including an emergency department, and pediatric care. In its first two weeks of activity, the hospital treated over 2,000 patients.
Since July 2024, primary health care activities have been launched at MSF’s clinic in Gaza City, including general consultations, care for non-communicable diseases, and malnutrition screening. Based on health needs assessments, since the beginning of August 2024 our teams have started developing sexual and reproductive health activities, following up with pregnant women for prenatal and postnatal care and providing gynecological consultations and family planning.
A dire lack of drinkable water, poor sanitation, and the destruction of water infrastructure have had dire consequences for people’s health in Gaza, including the spread of diseases and skin infections. Water distribution is therefore an important part of MSF’s response.
Currently, MSF is distributing 624,000 liters of desalinated water per day at over 40 water distribution points in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Rafah, and Deir el-Balah. In Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis, MSF has been implementing water and sanitation activities in camp shelters through a partnership with the Agriculture Development Association (PARC). This includes building latrines for more than 30,000 people across six camps, distributing hygiene kits for 2,400 families, providing clean drinking water to a population of 25,000 people per day. We also equipped a camp hosting 400 people with disabilities with accessible latrines and showers.
From left: Sewage flooding the streets around Nasser Hospital, Palestine 2024 © Ben Milpas/MSF; MSF water distribution in Rafah. Palestine 2024 © MSF
At the end of March 2024, MSF set up a new desalination plant in Al-Mawasi with a capacity of 35,000 liters per day. In Al Attar, a desalination plant was set up with a capacity of 40,000 liters per day. Two more are being set up in Deir el-Balah, with an expected delivery of 70,000 liters per day.
Since October 2023, MSF has provided 636 tons of logistic and medical equipment from our international supply centers—as much as 30 planes or 130 trucks full. However, some supplies critical to our operations and the security of our staff have been difficult to transport into Gaza, including generators, desalination stations and motor pumps, oxygen concentrators, vehicles, and equipment for communication.
Palestine 2024 © Ben Milpas/MSF
MSF response in Gaza
27,500 people treated for physical violence
7,500 surgical interventions
14,400 inpatients admitted
19,500 prenatal consultations
18,300 mental health consultations
28,000 non-communicable disease consultations
The medical needs in Gaza are immense. Many people need urgent assistance—including people with traumatic injuries, pregnant women who are about to deliver, people with chronic illnesses and mental health needs, children, and the elderly, in addition to thousands still buried under the rubble. Nearly 100,000 people are wounded, and an estimated 12,000 people are waiting to be medically evacuated for care not available in Gaza, but the closure of the Rafah crossing has brought medical evacuations to nearly a halt.
This war has displaced 90 percent of the population of Gaza. Living conditions in camps are appalling, with temporary structures covered in plastic sheeting and a lack of water, sanitation, and other essential needs as infectious diseases spread.
The collapse of health care infrastructure due to repeated attacks and lack of supplies has made medical care increasingly inaccessible as the overwhelming needs continue to grow. Out of the 36 main hospitals serving over 2 million people in Gaza, 20 are out of service, and those that remain partially functional face severe limitations on the types of services they can deliver. Ongoing attacks and evacuation orders put further strain on the facilities that remain functional.
War wounds, crush injuries, and burns treatment remain an urgent need as Israeli bombardment and attacks continue. But with very little capacity inside hospitals and a dire lack of medical supplies, people aren’t getting the care they need to heal properly or even survive.
Infections resulting from poorly treated wounds are a growing concern, driven by the difficulty wounded people face accessing care and follow-up, shortages of supplies, lack of access to hygiene, and the extremely limited supply of clean water.
Infectious diseases including diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, skin infections, and hepatitis are on the rise due to overcrowding and poor hygienic conditions in camps where displaced people are sheltering, and shortages of medicines and medical supplies.
Starvation is inevitable under the Israeli government’s policy of deliberate deprivation, and we are already seeing the impacts of food insecurity and hunger. According to the Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC), almost half a million people (22% of the population of Gaza) are facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, and the high risk of famine will persist across the whole Strip as long as the war continues and humanitarian access remains restricted.
In addition to the destruction or closures of once-functioning hospitals, the decimation of infrastructure has created severe obstacles for pregnant women trying to reach medical facilities. Pregnant women are often forced to navigate unsafe routes amid the fighting and without safe transportation—often delaying access to health care and putting them at higher risk of complications.
“The main health risks for pregnant women are blood-pressure related complications such as eclampsia, hemorrhage, and sepsis—which can become deadly if not treated in time,” says MSF emergency unit health advisor Mercè Rocaspana. “In contexts like Gaza, where the health system has been decimated and has collapsed, late access to care is posing a health risk to pregnant women and their children, with tragic—even lethal [consequences]."
At a glance
The Gaza Strip is a 141 square mile territory surrounded by walls and fences and under the constant control of the Israeli authorities. With 2.3 million people, it has one of the highest population densities in the world. Every aspect of life in Gaza is impacted by the ongoing siege and constant threat of violence.
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