00:00The Israeli offensive on Gaza City has raised new concerns for the civilian population, and in particular, children.
00:06Dr. Trish Scanlon is the medical co-director of Children, Not Numbers, which helps provide health care and medical evacuations.
00:15Thanks for coming on the program.
00:17We're hearing that Israel is going to be issuing these evacuation orders before they move in.
00:22Where can people go now?
00:25Well, thank you.
00:26I have just spoken to our senior pediatrician in Gaza City from Children, Not Numbers, and he said that the hospitals have already been issued with an evacuation order.
00:37They've been told to prepare to leave Gaza City, that the date and the time will be imminent.
00:44And as he said, there are possibly 10 hospitals across Gaza City.
00:49He's at the Alrantisi Hospital, which is the children's hospital in all of Gaza.
00:53There are 250 children admitted there at the moment.
00:57There are 30 children in the neonatal intensive care.
01:01There are five children who are ventilated in the pediatric intensive care unit.
01:06And I don't know if your listeners are aware, but back in November 2023,
01:11Rantisi Hospital was evacuated then, and children were left in the NICU,
01:16in the neonatal intensive care unit at that point.
01:18And the doctors were assured that those children would be moved to safety.
01:23But when the seat was lifted on the hospital and they came back in March, they found the rotting bodies of those babies.
01:30Are we really going to let that happen again?
01:33There are a million people in Gaza City.
01:36Half of those are children.
01:38And there is nowhere for them to go.
01:41There is nowhere.
01:41Trish, is the issue access in general, getting to the children, or is it where you go once you've got them out?
01:53Do you mean out of Gaza City or out of Gaza in general?
01:56Sorry, I don't know.
01:57Out of Gaza in general.
01:58I'm just wondering, you know, when you make the evacuation, where are you taking them?
02:03Where are the challenges?
02:04Within, we know about the ones within, but what about outside too?
02:07Oh, absolutely.
02:09So basically, when they're saying evacuate, they're not talking about evacuate out of Gaza.
02:14They're talking about evacuating the children to the south of Gaza, where there is nothing.
02:18The other question is also extremely important.
02:22So we as an organization, Children Not Numbers, we've evacuated more than 300 children from Gaza over the last 19 months.
02:31We are an organization that concentrates on children who have a primary chronic diagnosis, children who have heart disease, or children who have cancer, or children who've had a stroke, or children who've had a catastrophic injury from this horror.
02:45And what has been incredibly challenging is the evacuation process is very complex.
02:52It requires permissions from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
02:56It requires permission from the Israelis, and we also have to have a third country who will take the children.
03:03And all three of those has been, well, our Palestinian colleagues, they tell us exactly who they will and will not, you know, authorize to move.
03:13And that's fine.
03:14We can stay within those criteria.
03:15But for the other children, it's very challenging.
03:17Perhaps if you give me the time, I can tell you the story of one child.
03:22We have a little girl who's registered with us about a month, but her brother was registered with us before her.
03:29He was an 11-year-old little boy who four years ago had had renal failure, kidney failure, and his mother was his transplant donor.
03:37And he was very well until April of this year, when his kidney started to look like signs of failure again, which was as a result of, you know, just the devastation that they're all living through.
03:49So the doctors, our colleagues in Gaza, did an amazing job of stabilizing this little boy.
03:54And we tried from April until the middle of last month again and again to get that child out, and we could not get him out.
04:03And mid-last month, his house was bombed.
04:07He and his five siblings were killed along with his mother, and his father and his little sister, who is now one of our patients, were caught in the blast.
04:18They were burned.
04:19They were broken.
04:20And now we are trying to stabilize her and help her get to safety.
04:25So, unfortunately, more stories like that, I'm sure.
04:29Dr. Trish Scanlon, thank you for sharing that with us.
04:32Dr. Trish Scanlon, medical coordinator of Children, Not Numbers.
04:36Thanks.
04:36Thanks.
04:37Thanks.
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