Gaza: Burns recovery now even longer

Tayseer Mansour, 17, suffered third-degree burns after an Israeli strike hit the family house, killing his mother and injuring his father and brothers. He has been receiving treatment from Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) teams at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. “I can’t move my hands, it’s very painful. I can’t eat on my own or do much of anything else. . . . I hope I will recover.”

Since Israeli forces resumed hostilities on 18 March, MSF has seen an increase in the number of patients with burn injuries. In the north of the Strip, at the MSF clinic in Gaza City, the average this past month (April) is more than 100 patients a day. In the south, at Nasser, the largest functioning hospital left in Gaza, MSF teams have performed more than 1,000 operations on patients, 70 per cent of them children, most under the age of five, since May 2024.

Patients with severe burns need high-level, long-term care, including multiple surgeries and daily dressings in a sterile environment as well as pain management, physiotherapy and psychological support. But with no humanitarian aid entering Gaza since 2 March, MSF teams are running low on even basic painkillers.

“Children scream as we peel burnt fabric from their skin,” says Dr Ahmad Abu Warda, MSF medical activity manager at Nasser. “They beg us to stop, but if we don’t remove the dead tissue, infection and sepsis can lead to death.” With too few supplies and too many patients needing care, “we are merely delaying inevitable infections.”

Also jeopardising recovery: lack of food—to heal, burns patients need more than double the number of daily calories. “The conditions in Gaza are extremely difficult,” says Mansour. “There is no healthy food, meat or proper nutrition.”

“Our patients’ bodies are consuming themselves to close wounds that never heal,” says one MSF surgeon. “Tayseer has been in the hospital for eight months. In normal conditions, he would have healed in three. But with no food, no pain relief, no clean water, he’s stuck in a cycle of graft failures, infection and despair.”

Since December 2024, MSF teams at Nasser, the MSF clinic in Gaza City and the field hospital in Deir al-Balah have provided more than 6,518 burn dressings. Nearly half the patients have not returned for follow-up care, though. Perhaps not for want of trying. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than half the functioning health facilities are in areas under evacuation orders as of 24 April. Healthcare in Gaza is almost inaccessible.