Doctors in Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray region say pa-tients are needlessly dying of treatable conditions because a de facto blockade is preventing medicines and other life-saving supplies from reaching stricken hospitals.
A dire shortage of oxygen, intravenous fluids and other critical equipment had made surgery and essential procedures almost impossible over the past six months, according to doctors from Tigray’s big-gest hospital.
“As a result, children who needed shunt surger-ies are left to die, those with treatable cancers are denied their rights and those with fractures are forced to wait while being immobilised,” said a statement from doctors at Ayder Referral Hospital dated January 4.
“Those who could easily have been saved with hemodialysis are dying. Patients who have had di-alysis for years at our hospital are forced to die just because the supplies that could have been brought are not allowed to reach us.”
The appeal for help came as new data collected by local doctors and researchers in Tigray showed deaths from preventable diseases and starvation had risen markedly since the outset of war.
Thousands of people have died in Ethiopia’s 14-month-long conflict and parts of Tigray are experi-encing famine conditions.
Access to Tigray, the northernmost region of Ethiopia, is restricted and AFP could not independ-ently verify the doctors’ accounts.
Tigray is also under a communications blackout and what the United Nations has described as a de facto aid blockade, preventing sufficient food and medicine from reaching the region of six million people.
No trucks with aid cargo have reached Tigray since December 14 and others waiting to enter the region had been plundered, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in its latest report on the situa-tion.
Health outreach has been halted in parts of Ti-gray because of a shortage of essential drugs, OCHA said.
The doctors at Ayder Referral Hospital in Ti-gray’s capital Mekele painted a picture of despera-tion as supplies dried up in recent months. Medics begged businesses in Mekele for dona-tions of soap and detergent, as doctors went to work without gloves, antibiotics or painkillers for women in childbirth.
Blackouts were frequent and oxygen supply ir-regular, “resulting in the death of patients because of the frequent breaking down of the machines” that could have been repaired if spare parts could have been sent from Addis Ababa.—AFP
