“I have a cold. And in one hour, I’ll have finished a 24-hour shift, heartbroken again. I lost a cardiac patient because we had no medication.

“Another patient shot in the head, was left to die slowly because we had no ventilator. A child with a shattered skull and exposed brain matter just died in front of me. I also just found a kidney patient collapsed on the bedroom floor. He had a seizure due to brain damage because he has not had dialysis in three months. A diabetic man hadn’t eaten in four days. He cried when I asked why. I gave him fluids and some money to buy flour. I’m so sorry for the starving, for the children we couldn’t save, for the mothers, for the elderly, for the vulnerable. Not a single shift has passed without having me shattered.”

This is the reality in Gaza right now for the medical profession struggling to save an overwhelming amount of patients, not only from the bombings and gunshot wounds but now also from starvation. And the starvation has reached everyone, including the doctors themselves, some of whom have passed out on the floors of what remains of Gaza’s hospitals, then picked themselves up and gone back to work.

Those opening words belonged to Dr Ali Tahrawi, an emergency room doctor at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.They were read aloud at a recent Washington, DC press conference by Dr Ashraf Abou El-Ezz, a physician from Indiana who knows he has all the resources he needs.

But somehow, the words are never loud enough and even though they were spoken in the shadow of the US Capitol building, those inside had already left for the summer recess. And in any case, most of them are not listening. Only US Representative Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan Democrat and........

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