A Palestinian boy eats a hot meal at a food distribution point in the Nuseirat camp for refugees in the central Gaza Strip on May 24, 2025. (Eyad BABA / AFP)
Khan Younis, May 28 (RHC)-- Victoria Rhodes, a British senior plastic and reconstructive surgeon on a mission to Gaza, has called for adequate humanitarian aid to be allowed into the strip, describing the recent trucks that entered the territory as “a drop in the ocean.”
Speaking in an interview with Press TV, Rhodes said the recent entry of 90 aid trucks in Gaza is “a drop in the ocean compared to what we need.” She called for “a lift on this blockade and an unlimited amount of medical aid, food, and also unlimited access for medical workers into Gaza, so that we can support the health care system.”
Rhodes, who took part in three missions in Gaza since Israel’s genocidal war on the strip began, noted that the situation there “got steadily worse,” citing the mass destruction and “the extent of how many people had lost their homes.”
“This time there wasn't a building standing or any sign of life for the first ten minutes of the drive” on Salah al-Din Road, the main highway of the Gaza Strip.
Doctor Rhodes, who was forced to relocate to al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, along with other medical staff and patients, following previous Israeli attacks on the European Hospital, warned against any possible evacuation order of al-Nasser Hospital, “the biggest of all the hospitals that were ever in the south” of Gaza.
If Nasser closed, hundreds of patients would die because there's nowhere that we can send them, she said. She noted that Israel is deliberately targeting hospitals and aims to totally destroy the health care system in Gaza.
Citing a severe lack of medical supplies, Rhodes said: “We have no specialist equipment apart from what I've brought with me. All of the instruments are old, they've been sterilized a million times... So it's a real struggle.”
The British doctor pointed out that even patients, especially children, who receive treatment, see their wounds not heal due to malnutrition and the living conditions.
“The children have been hit really hard by the malnutrition, and you can see it immediately. They're all a lot smaller than they should be for their age,” she said, adding: “They're not recovering as quickly as children normally recover, and they are susceptible to infection in a way that I've never seen before. It's a culmination of the malnutrition.”
She said the living conditions, where people are in tents and the environment is not clean, mean that an explosion takes place, dirt from the tent floor gets pushed into wounds, making them “inherently dirty”.
Referring to Israel’s halt of the vaccination program, she said children have been left with no immunity. “Israel stopped the vaccination program. So we're seeing a lot of infections that we wouldn't normally see,” she added.
Commenting on the change in Western governments’ tone and the UK’s suspension of trade talks with Tel Aviv, Rhodes said the West “has to do more” to end the suffering of the Palestinians.
She expressed hope that “the governments, particularly in Europe, have finally started to listen to the population” as pro-Gaza protests have engulfed European countries. “I am hopeful that this step will be one of many in the right direction.”
Rhodes stressed that the situation in Gaza is not a political one. “This is a humanitarian issue. And hundreds of people are dying from preventable deaths. And we could easily prevent this by getting aid into Gaza. And that's food, that's medical aid, and that's healthcare workers and aid workers.”
Israel launched the campaign of genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023. It has killed nearly 54,000 Palestinians there so far.
[ SOURCE: PRESS TV ]
