KHAN YUNIS: At a hospital in Gaza, wards are filled with patients fearing they will be left without care if Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is forced out under an Israeli ban due to take effect in March. Last month, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organisations, including MSF, from operating in Gaza from March 1 for failing to provide detailed information on their Palestinian staff.
“They stood by us throughout the war,” said 10-year old Adam Asfour, his left arm pinned with metal rods after he was wounded by shrapnel in a bombing in September. “When I heard it was possible they would stop providing services, it made me very sad,” he added from his bed at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital.
Inside the packed Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in the territory, MSF staff were still tending to children with burns, shrapnel wounds and chronic illnesses. But their presence may end soon. MSF says it currently provides at least 20 per cent of hospital beds in Gaza and operates around 20 health centres. In 2025 alone, it carried out more than 800,000 medical consultations and over 10,000 deliveries. — AFP
