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From a Reuters report:
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Reuters - Monday, January 21 02:02 pm
JABALYA, Gaza (Reuters) - Ready to act fast to save his life, Maher Al-Assali's young siblings stand at his bedside, poised to pump air through a hole in the 12-year-old's neck when the ventilator that keeps him alive cuts out.
Since being paralysed in a car accident seven years ago, Assali has depended on a mechanical ventilator to supply his lungs with oxygen. During the electricity blackouts that have plagued the impoverished territory for months, his family used to hook the machine up to a generator at a nearby clinic.
But Israel has cut fuel supplies to Hamas-run Gaza as part of sanctions it says are meant to stop militants firing rockets across the border. The clinic generator has shut down. So now, when the power grid fails, Assali's family keep him alive with a rubber hand pump.
"I am afraid," said the boy in a voice that was barely audible. "I could suffocate while asleep if the electricity suddenly goes off, I am afraid to die."
Gaza City plunged into darkness on Sunday night when the enclave's only power station shut down after Israel closed the borders and cut fuel supplies. The Jewish state has vowed to keep up the restrictions until militants stop firing rockets.
The plant supplies about 30 percent of the Gaza Strip's electricity but almost all power to the main city, where about half the territory's 1.5 million people live. The European Union and United Nations have urged Israel to lift the blockade.
The residents of Jabalya in northern Gaza still have some electricity but Assali's father said power usually cuts out several times during the day and night.
Hamas Islamists who refuse to renounce violence and recognise Israel seized control of Gaza after routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah forces in June.
Since then, Israel has opened U.S.-backed peace talks with Abbas but has shunned Hamas and isolated the Gaza Strip.
Clinics and hospitals in Gaza halted all but the most urgent surgery on Sunday for lack of power, and thousands of factors have stopped work. Shoppers have been stockpiling food.
Khaled Radi, spokesman for the Hamas-run ministry of interior, said hundreds of sick patients were at risk because there was no fuel to power generators. He said vaccines for children may soon go off because they cannot be kept cold.
Assali's family say they try to keep someone at his bedside at all times in case the
power cuts out. His eight brothers and sisters and even his cousins help out.
"I'm giving him some oxygen," said his 13-year-old brother Udai as he squeezed the rubber pump in his fist. "I don't want him to die."
5 comments:
Thank you for sharing this. It is so often something we don't think about. I just happen to have my first experience of disability being extremely scarey while in the Gaza strip. I was using a wheelchair at the time, for the first time, and the difficulty of simply moving anywhere was mind boggling. Luckily, folks were used to it enough that as soon as I would reach an impasse, someone would step out from nowhere and assist me to get to the next place where I could go on myself (or I should say the person pushing my chair could go on by themselves), which probably totaled about 3 feet in all. I kept thinking: What if something happens? What will I do? What if a bomb goes off? What if rockets start firing? I couldn't operate the chair myself, it was a non power chair and i had no use of my neck/arms. It was quite a wakeup call and for the first time, I was really cognizant of the disability rights movement in the States, and how fucking far along we are in comparison with other places.
Thanks for sharing, xine. I think about power all the time -- many times a day checking to be sure everything is getting juice, seeing that my backup battery is charging, knowing the other backup is handy, knowing I have a spare vent, several ambu bags, a van to get me to the hospital where there is a generator, etc. Yet I cannot imagine the ambu bag being one's only hope, for hours and days with no relief in sight.
The helpfulness of people in Gaza doesn't surprise me, for some reason. I suppose because war disables everyone in a sense, everyone needs assistance and interdependence becomes a way of life for everyone.
Totally off-topic, but I wanted to tell you about my additional blog if you want to check it out (http://roadhogsruminations.blogspot.com/). It focuses strictly on disability.
I'm speechless. I feel so hopeless reading about this and guilty because I feel as if I should be doing something that would help our brothers and sisters in Gaza right now. Thank you for being unafraid to address these issues.
By the way, did you know that BrainHell passed away yesterday? I'm not sure if you were familiar with him. He had ALS. My heart is just so broken today.
I hope you don't mind me leaving a link to his blog, Blue.
BrainHell: What if they discovered a disease and nobody wanted it
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