Interviewer: A shocking new statistic from Palestinian officials. Roughly one out of every hundred people in Gaza has been killed since the Hamas attacks on October 7. Jordan’s King Abdullah says the war is creating, quote, “an entire generation of orphans”. The continuing violence makes functioning medical facilities like Al Aqsa Hospital, all the more vital. We want to warn you about the images we’re about to show you. They are indeed disturbing. Recent photos from the hospital show us just what we’ve been dealing, what people there have been dealing with. So many patients that are being treated on the floor. And to make matters even more dire, at least two groups helping to provide care at that hospital say they have no choice but to withdraw in light of the increasing Israeli military activity. Nick Manard is a surgeon who has been the clinical lead of an emergency medical team working in that hospital for the last two weeks. He’s just left Gaza today and he joins us from Cairo. Doctor, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us. You have been working there at Al-Aqsa for two weeks as we said. This decision to leave, I can’t imagine it’s been an easy one. Explain to our viewers why you had to leave

Nick Manard: we have to get an agreement every day from the Israeli Defense Force that it will be de-conflicted, to allow us to go to the hospital. And we’ve been going there daily for two weeks, we were there on Friday. I was operating all day, I’m a surgeon, and there was an attack on the intensive care unit. And we were due to leave at about that time anyway, but the following morning the whole area was taken out of the de-confliction and we were told by the Israeli Defense Force that we would not be able to go. So we left. I was there with an organization called Medical Aid for Palestinians and MSF were there as well and both, all sets of doctors, foreign doctors, had to leave.

Interviewer: You left basically for your safety, because of the threat of attack. So when you hear the IDF say they don’t target hospitals, what do you say to that?

Nick Manard: Well it’s simply not true. I’ve been going to Gaza for nearly 15 years now, I have many friends who work in hospitals there, and there are many examples of hospitals being attacked. In the last two days, since I left Al-Aqsa Hospital, there have been attacks on the hospital. So it is absolutely not the case that they do not attack hospitals.

Interviewer: Do you have a sense of the number of staff that have left or are leaving Al-Aqsa, and the impact that this is going to have on those who desperately of course need surgery and medical support here?

Nick Manard: So for the last two or three days we were there, until Friday, they were admitting several hundred patients a day. There was one local doctor in the emergency department and that was supplemented by two people from the team I was in. In the surgery department on one of the days last week there was one local surgeon and two of us, and we hear subsequently that the majority of those have gone. So I fear there are not enough staff to run the hospital in any form at all now.