Chicago area doctors treated up to 700 patients a day in Gaza during two-week medical mission
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Two Chicago area doctors who helped provide medical care in Gaza just returned from a medical mission where they saw as many as 700 patients per day.
Dr. John Kahler and Dr. Zaher Sahloul, co-founders of MedGlobal, flew to Gaza on Jan. 5 to provide care to those in need amid the war. They returned home on Saturday.
Their team was deployed to three sites in Gaza, and treated 600 to 700 patients per day at a primary health center they set up.
"There was complete chaos, as you can imagine," he said Monday. "There was no heat, there was no sanitation. So it was a catastrophe. It is a catastrophe. It was, and it's getting worse."
Kahler said they had to dodge missile strikes and drone attacks while trying to treat civilians in Gaza, many of them children.
"This is what we do, and this of all things has been probably the most significant humanitarian crisis since World War II," he said.
MedGlobal is a Chicago Ridge-based nonprofit that provides medical supplies, support, and treatment to those in need in Gaza and several other countries – including Bangladesh, Colombia, Venezuela, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and Mexico.
"Our major work now, obviously, our focus now will be on Gaza, but the other countries don't go away; Sudan, Beirut, all of them. None of those go away. So our focus now will be on Gaza. We've sent another team in today, and we'll have teams go in every two to three weeks."
The Palestinian death toll from the war has surpassed 25,000, while more than 62,000 others have been wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The overall toll is thought to be higher because many casualties remain buried under the rubble from Israeli strikes or in areas where medics cannot reach them.
The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza's residents from their homes, with hundreds of thousands packing into U.N.-run shelters and tent camps in the southern part of the tiny coastal enclave. U.N. officials say a quarter of the population of 2.3 million is starving as a trickle of humanitarian aid reaches them because of the fighting and Israeli restrictions.
The war began with Hamas' surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel officials said that Hamas killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 240 hostages back to Gaza. More than 100 hostages remain in the hands of Hamas, as talks resume on a proposal to free the remaining hostages.
