How should we imagine the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine? The doctor Tancred Stöbe has already worked in both crisis areas.
Joe Biden made it clear: “There are many innocent people who are starving, many innocent people who are in trouble and dying. This has to stop,” said the US President on Thursday about the actions of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. He also believes that Israel’s actions are “excessive.”
But how exactly should one imagine the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and other crisis areas after the terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel from there with numerous attacks on October 7th? As a doctor for the aid organization Doctors Without Borders, Tankred Stöbe has already been to Gaza, Ukraine and numerous other war and crisis areas around the world several times. Stöbe spoke to t-online about his most recent deployment, about how to operate on people in exceptional situations and whether he still feels fear after all these years in crisis areas.
t-online: Mr. Stöbe, you have just come from an aid mission to Haiti. What did you experience there?
Tankred Stöbe: The country has been one of the central crisis areas for us for many years. Haiti is only a third of the island of Hispaniola, the other part is the Dominican Republic. There are hardly two neighboring countries on earth with major differences.
Many tourists travel to the Dominican Republic, but Haiti is a “failed state”: the capital Port-au-Prince is largely dominated by gang violence. I was in a slum that is not even accessible by car. We run the only small clinic there for around 100,000 residents and provide clean water. Twelve million people live in Haiti, but the existential misery is hardly noticed in Germany.
However, there is a lot of talk about the Gaza Strip. You were there in 2005 and 2018: Aid organizations are currently saying that the humanitarian situation is catastrophic.
I think about these people every day. Hamas’s atrocious attack on October 7 is unacceptable. But the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza is also unbearable. There is hardly a hospital there that has not been attacked in recent months. Even if people make it to the clinic with serious injuries, they can no longer receive adequate care there. There is simply a lack of everything we need for medical care. There are too few anesthetics and painkillers. The power also keeps going out.
Is it possible to operate on a person without anesthesia?
Technically yes, but ethically not. A doctor in Germany would never do that. But colleagues there have to ask themselves: Can I save the life of a wounded person? And then they operate without anesthesia. That means extreme pain. This is unimaginable for us, but sometimes there is no alternative to this in Gaza.
(Quelle: teutopress GmbH/imago images)
To person
Tankred Stöbe, born in Nuremberg in 1969, is an internist and emergency medical doctor who frequently works in crisis and war zones around the world. From 2007 to 2015 he was president of the aid organization “Doctors Without Borders” in Germany, and from 2015 to 2018 he was a member of the international board. In 2016 he was awarded the highest award, the Paracelsus Medal, by the German Medical Association. He has been a recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit since 2021. He wrote down his professional experiences in the book “Courage and Humanity” (Fischer-Verlag).
You were in the Gaza Strip in 2005 when the Israeli settlements there were evacuated. You have written about this time in a book wrote that medical care was weakest in Rafah at that time. What did you think when it was last said that the Israeli army wanted to take military action there?
That was almost 20 years ago – and the situation has not improved, but has worsened. Most people are now in the south of Gaza. If the last clinics there are now bombed, that will of course increase the need. It is important to protect civilian life here.
However, Hamas also controls the health system in the Gaza Strip. How do you imagine that in a hospital?
We try to stay out of these discussions as much as possible. We of course condemn it if Hamas uses hospitals as protective shields. We keep demanding that hospitals must be protected and aid must come to Gaza unhindered. There must be a permanent ceasefire. We have to uphold international law.
