Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), confirmed that Gaza’s health infrastructure has suffered catastrophic damage due to Israel’s ongoing campaign of extermination since October 2023.
Medical workers, he said, are enduring the same devastation as the rest of Gaza’s civilian population. “We’ve lost 15 of our colleagues in two years,” Zabalgogeazkoa stated. “That’s devastating. Our teams are exhausted, displaced, and operating under fire.”
Hospitals across Gaza have been systematically targeted. In some areas, facilities have been completely destroyed.
In others, partially functional hospitals remain inaccessible due to siege conditions, displacement, and active military targeting.
Even the few hospitals still able to operate have been forced to function outside their compounds, often in bombed-out courtyards or tents. These facilities are overwhelmed, under-resourced, and physically collapsing under the weight of mass casualties.
Zabalgogeazkoa described the situation as “total exhaustion.” Medical teams are working without reliable electricity, clean water, fuel, or basic sanitation supplies like chlorine. Food for patients is scarce, and staff are operating under constant threat of bombardment and sniper fire.
“They’ve been working like this for two years,” he said. “They’re not just tired—they’re traumatized.”
Doctors Without Borders has repeatedly called for international protection of healthcare workers and facilities in Gaza. The organization warns that the destruction of medical infrastructure is not collateral damage—it is a deliberate strategy to collapse civilian survival systems.
This warning comes amid broader accusations that “Israel is committing mediacide”: the targeted erasure of journalism, healthcare, and civil infrastructure in Gaza.
MSF joins dozens of humanitarian organizations in demanding unrestricted access for international journalists and medical teams, and an end to the siege that has turned hospitals into graveyards.
