28 premature babies arrive in Egypt for healthcare after Israeli invasion of Shifa Hospital

Twenty-eight premature babies in need of healthcare arrived in Egypt from Gaza on Monday, medical sources told Mada Masr.

They were among 31 premature babies who barely survived the Occupation’s siege, bombing and subsequent raid of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the largest medical facility in Gaza, where thousands of medical staff, patients and displaced people were taking shelter. Five premature babies died in Shifa hospital due to the Occupation’s siege, as the hospital ran out of fuel and its generators failed.

The babies were taken on Sunday to Tal al-Sultan Hospital in Rafah, south Gaza. Egyptian authorities equipped ambulances with mobile incubators to pick up the 28 babies from the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt and transport them to Arish General Hospital, a medical source told Mada Masr on the condition of anonymity.

Egyptian Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar arrived at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza on Monday morning to receive them.

The infants, who were accompanied by five women and five nurses from Tal al-Sultan Hospital, are set to be transported to Cairo via an equipped military plane parked at Arish International Airport, the medical source said.

The 28 newborns had been fed contaminated water and milk, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said, noting that this caused health complications that required them to be transferred outside Gaza. 

The 28 were some of a total of 36 premature infants who were being cared for at the Shifa Medical Complex. Five of them died at Shifa, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Sunday, noting that the hospital ran out of fuel to power its generators and operate incubators for them. Israel has imposed a total prohibition on aid supplies reaching the northern part of the strip, bringing the health system in the area to a complete collapse.

The three other premature infants — two girls as well as a boy whose family is unknown — who survived the occupying forces’ assault on the Shifa Medical Complex in northern Gaza and were transferred to Tal al-Sultan Hospital were found to be in better health conditions, a source at the hospital told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. It was therefore decided that they would remain in Gaza, the source said.

Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza where thousands of medical staff, patients and displaced people were taking shelter, was exposed to open warfare last week. The Occupation military stormed the medical complex and pushed the wounded and displaced to evacuate towards the southern parts of the Gaza Strip. The World Health Organization has described the hospital as having turned into a “death zone.”