THE CHRIS HEDGES REPORT Mon 4pm

Israel’s Eradication of Gaza’s Healthcare System with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa’s harrowing experiences treating patients in Gaza undoubtedly show that Israel’s “war” on Gaza is not a conflict with Hamas—but a full throated attack on the civilian population.

If anyone can witness the genocide in Gaza with utmost clarity, it would be medical professionals working there. Their accounts continue to be as harrowing as those of journalists and Gazans themselves, stripped of rhetoric and left with only raw truth. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a general, trauma and critical care surgeon in California, has been to Gaza twice and he joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.

“There is no serious health system in Gaza anymore,” Sidhwa tells Hedges. Instead, what’s left of hospitals are mere buildings filled with medical professionals stripped of the equipment vital to saving lives, refugees seeking anything more than tents and endless streams of people barely surviving the constant onslaught of bombs. Sidhwa explains the gut wrenching details of treating people mangled by bombs, children shot in the head and the inability to save people because of the lack of basic equipment. While describing the treatment of a six-year-old boy with severe shrapnel injuries, Sidhwa explains, “In the flagship hospital of any third world country, this kid could have survived. But at Nasser [Medical Complex], we don’t have the right types of pressures, the right types of critical care medications and even just simple things like a pediatric ventilator, which just wasn’t available. So he died 12 hours later.”

The situation in Gaza, as Sidhwa details, is morbidly bleak:

“I don’t know how women who need C-sections will get them. I don’t know how people who even just have regular role general surgery problems will be able to get them. I don’t know how a kid that has asthma will be able to get albuterol. I don’t know how somebody with heart disease will be able to get their medications. Just leaving aside the trauma. And then on top of that…the whole population is being starved. Literally no food has gone into Gaza for six weeks.”

LOCATION CHANGE–CHRIS WILL APPEAR AT COLUMBUS HALL, 4425 Home Ave, SD 92105 bit.ly/KNSJ2025

A REMINDER: Chris Hedges will be in San Diego this Friday, May 30, 5pm on a fundraiser for KNSJ with his latest book A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. Order your tickets now. http://bit.ly/KNSJ2025. Tell your friends and colleagues. Another dynamic book showing Hedge’s astute observations and critical eye, his first-hand experiences and his eloquent writing style. Tickets can be purchased at bit.ly/KNSJ025

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times best-selling author.