CHICAGO — A sendoff was held Friday for a group of doctors and medical staff who are about to embark on a month-long journey to help provide medical care to those sick and injured in the Gaza Strip.
Doctor Zaher Sahloul and his team, along with Doctor Chandra Hassan, are all practicing medical professionals from the Chicago area who are heading overseas trying to help with the ongoing crisis.
"Half the healthcare has stopped working, many hospitals [have] closed," Sahloul said. "This is catastrophic care."
The international healthcare organization they founded, MedGlobal, is doing what it can to help, though this team doesn’t have a full picture of the crisis they’ll triage.
"We are going in half blind," said Hassan, who is the Director of Bariatric Surgery at the University of Illinois-Chicago. "Here in a big city like Chicago, if we have one mass casualty event in a year, we prepare for that. But this is nonstop back on back on back."
Dr. Hassan has experience in war zones – he’s taken four trips to serve in Ukraine during its ongoing war with Russia.
"You have to learn to operate with what’s available," Hassan said. "And the injuries you see aren’t the average kind of injuries you see here."
Sahloul, Hassan and the rest of their team is heading to the southern Gaza city of Rafah – where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled because of Israel’s bombardment. The doctors are concerned not only about injuries but the spread of disease. In their suitcases, they’ve packed food, medicine, antiseptics and wound dressings. Even portable ultrasound machines.
"I have 12 grandchildren," said Doctor John Kahler. "And so the thoughts of this happening to any of them mandates that I go."
Asked if he's scared of what he'll find once he is on the ground in the Gaza Strip, Kahler gave a frank answer.
"I would be stupid to say I wasn’t," Kahler said. "But the benefit far outweighs the danger."
This team will first head to Cairo, Egypt, and head to Gaza from there on Monday. When they return home, MedGlobal plans to send a new medical team to Gaza every two weeks.