STORY: Int'l medic recalls tough time working in war-torn Gaza
SHOOTING TIME: Jan. 19, 2024
DATELINE: Jan. 22, 2024
LENGTH: 0:02:00
LOCATION: Cairo
CATEGORY: HEALTH

SHOTLIST:
1. various of Gaza-related footage
2. SOUNDBITE (English): ENRICO VALLAPERTA, Italian intensive care nurse with MSF

STORYLINE:   

A medic from Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has given first-hand perspective about the challenges and experiences he had while working in a Gaza hospital during the Israel-Hamas conflict.
   
During a press conference held in Cairo on Friday, Enrico Vallaperta, an Italian intensive care nurse with the MSF who left Gaza on Thursday, said he had worked in central Gaza's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for several weeks amid very tough and dangerous conditions.

SOUNDBITE (English): ENRICO VALLAPERTA, Italian intensive care nurse with MSF
"When I arrived (at the hospital), there were more than 650 patients and thousands of refugees. They were living in the hospital or between the buildings of the hospital and its external walls.
We could not continue to work in a safe context. It has been a pretty heartbreaking situation. Deciding to evacuate means taking the staff out and leaving patients inside because we can move 700 patients to nowhere as there is no safe place. We decided to go to the south (of the Gaza Strip). After two days, we faced another difficult situation. It was a shelling of the shelter where a part of our staff were living. It was a shelter with more than 100 staff and (their) families that had been shelled. Fortunately, the bomb did not explode." 

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Cairo.
(XHTV)