Maltese medical associations express solidarity with doctors in Gaza strip

A group of medical specialist associations in Malta have issued a joint statement expressing solidarity with doctors in the Gaza strip, while urging the Maltese government to advocate more strongly for cessation of hostility.

14 associations endorsed a statement expressing solidarity with medical doctors in the Gaza strip “working under extreme duress in the middle of a war zone”.

The statement acknowledges that doctors in the Gaza strip are operating under siege, without electricity, water and food supplies, and without adequate supply of medicines and anaesthetic drugs – all while surrounded by incessant bombing.

The associations also encouraged the Maltese government, as an EU member state and as a member of the UN Security Council, to advocate more strongly for “cessation of hostility and for full protection of medical facilities in accordance with international law on humanitarian protection”.

The statements comes after the World Health Organisation warned that Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al Shifa, is becoming a cemetery as bodies pile up inside and outside.

There has been particular concern over the fate of over 30 premature babies, who are no longer able to stay in their incubators.

According to the BBC, the head of the Hamas-run health ministry said over 100 corpses are piled up in the hospital’s courtyard as there is no fuel to power the mortuaries.

The statement was endorsed by: the Maltese Association of Radiologists and Nuclear Medicine Physicians, the Maltese Association of Psychiatry, the Malta Pediatric Association, the Malta Association of Ophthalmologists, the Malta College of Family Doctors, the Association of Anaesthesiologists of Malta, the Geriatric Medicine Society of Malta, the Association of Emergency Physicians of Malta, the Malta College of Pathologists, the Malta College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Malta Association of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, the Maltese Association of Dermatology & Venereology, the Malta Association of Public Health Medicine, and the Association of Surgeons of Malta.