I first went to Gaza in February March twenty twenty, just before COVID was hitting the world, and visited again in twenty twenty two and was supposed to return in October twenty twenty three. And when I first visited, I was blown away by Gaza's vibrancy.
Doctor Rachel Coglin is a palliative care doctor based in Melbourne. On her visits to Gaza, she spent time in hospitals and healthcare facilities across the Strip.
I spent most of my time with healthcare workers, many of whom have since become my friends.
Dear beloved Sister Richer, thank you so much for your kind or destroy your kindness, for your unwavering support.
One of those friends is doctor Carmis Elissi Comis.
He's a pain medicine and a neuro rehabilitation specialist who has spent the last two years continuing to care for his patients. I'm not sure that there's a day gone by where he hasn't turned up to a hospital and start to move around between different hospitals, but has always remained in the north of Gaza in Gaza City.
In personal level, I decided since the beginning of the war, to stay with my family, to protect my family, and to help the poor patients here in Gaza who are suffering from chronic pain and neurological diseases that I could be overhelp to them.
As the death toll has mounted over the past two years, healthcare workers across Gaza have continued showing up to care for their patients in increasingly horrific circumstances. But now as Israel's bombardment of Gaza City intensifies, doctor Alessi has had to make a devastating decision stay and care for his patients or flee to save his family. I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven AM today doctor Rachel Cockland
on her friend doctor Comis Alessie. It's Wednesday, October one. Rachel, You've been speaking to many healthcare workers in Gaza, including your friend doctor Carmis Alessi, regularly since October seven. So when Israels bombardment began two years ago, tell me about what your friends told you about the decision to stay and to keep the hospitals going.
I think there is a deep sense of staying to care for your people. Every single health worker that I am in contact with, has not stopped caring, has not
stopped turning up to work. Despite all personal risks. Comis has had opportunity to leave Gaza to live in safety in other parts of the world, and he made a very conscious decision at the beginning of this conflict to stay with his family to protect his fami family and that includes both his seven children and his wife and his huge extended family, and to continue to help caring for the poorer people in Gaza who was suffering.
I had many good offers ready to live Gaza over the past seven hundred and fifteen days. I refused really and remained in Gaza, serving thousands and thousands of people and needed patience.
Almost everyone I know in Gaza has stayed, no matter what profession, no matter what their background, they have stepped up to support and to care for their people. He has had to evacuate several times. I can't I've lost count of the number of times that he has had to move his house and move his family.
I personally, with my family and my sisters and my mother and my brothers, have moved more than thirteen times from one place to another.
Living in fear, living with very little water, difficulty getting food, no secure realty, and real attempts to stay and to hold on, hold on to hope.
And what has come is said to you about his work, about what he's been seeing in these hospitals that he's been in over the past two years.
Commiss has described, you know, in great detail, the decimation, and he coined at one point recently the one hundred ways to die in Gaza. Whether that's from drinking dirty water, unclean and unsafe water, snipers and quad copters, whether that's from aerial bombardment, whether that's from being a cancer patient and not having access to healthcare anymore, or a dialysis patient not having access to dialysis.
More than eleven thousand cancer patients are left with no medicines, no chemotherapy in no radiotherapy, and no surgery and no pain relief, no palliative care for them.
They haven't had a steady supply of you know, the right medicine or any medicines in fact, for a very very long time.
Tell this moment, more than three hundred and fifty thousand individuals in Gaza are suffering from infectious diseases ranging between gastroententritis the area, respiratory infections and infectious skin infections in the people in the refugee areas.
And as that was happening, as medicines were running out and things were getting worse in Gaza, you would have been seeing the death counts come out sometimes daily, and I suppose trying to work out if it was your colleagues, if it was your friends who were among the people killed.
Yeah, and that's still a daily thing.
You know.
You wake up in the morning and check you WhatsApp messages in the hope that those little blue ticks appear and that they have read the messages. And I know that they are still alive. And some of my friends and my colleagues have been killed. My friend Mahmud Alhendi, who was a father to eight children and a grandchildren and a trained nurse who worked at Alali Hospital supporting women with breast cancer. He was murdered in March twenty twenty four as he stepped onto his balcony. He was
snipered in the chest three times by Israeli forces. We had another colleague, doctor hammam Alo, who sent a message from his father's house near Al Shifa. We said, the sounds I'm hearing now worse than action in video games. Bombing hasn't stopped for hours, and he was debating whether to go to work that day to treat his dialysis patients. He was one of Gars's handful of mophrologists who provided
central dialysis treatment for people with kidney disease. And just after he had sent that message, he was killed by an idea of bomb strike on his father's home, alongside his father and his brother in law and his father in law. And he was thirty six years old. And he had last message that morning actually and said in his very last message on WhatsApp, you're shouting me a lot to us.
Please keep it up.
And I don't know whether it's silly or not, but find myself sending them a tribute via WhatsApps if I'm waiting for them to message back, because I guess that's the only way that I have to say goodbye.
Coming up the decision facing doctor carmis Alessi Rachel. In the past two weeks, Israel has stepped up its bombing of Gaza City. There's been air strikes, heavy artillery has flattened buildings, including hospitals. So what do we know about whether it is still possible to provide medical care in Gaza right now?
So we know that I think the UN Human Rights off Us put out a release in the last few days. I think they've calculated seventeen in Israeli attacks on on near health facilities in Gaza City since the sixteenth of September, So in the last couple of weeks. And what we are hearing on the ground from healthcare workers that we know there who were still in those healthcare facilities and hospitals in Gaza City is that there are daily attacks
on already decimated hospitals and clinics. More than half of the hospitals in Gaza City are no longer working. Al Shifa Hospital, the main hospital in Gaza, continues to be partially functional. Our Ali Hospital continues to be partially functional. Our Kuds run by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, continues to be partially functional. But when we say partially functional,
that's incredibly limited service. And yet the healthcare staff stay and there are patients still in those hospitals needing urgent healthcare.
And so what have these latest attacks meant for doctor Kamis.
Yeah, so he Commis left a lengthy voice message last week. I think it was describing that after seven hundred and fifteen days or so, he had finally made the decision that he needed to move him and his family from Gaza City.
After seven hundred and fifteen days of being steadfast in Gaza and working with people here trying to save as many lives as possible, finally I decided to leave Gada to the middle zone of Gaza.
Yes, his message was pained and exhausted, and his voice, you know, occasionally cracking through the message.
They've added new tools of our parent massacres, using sixteen bombing of total of towers, buildings, detonation of thanks amongst residential blocks, and choosing by c helicopters or helicopters on people.
He described having to leave behind his aunt, who had been killed only days before last week.
I've lost my only aunt with her children and grandchildren, almost fifty three individuals of that family, four generations, has gone completely until now we cannot retrieve her body or the bodies or her kids and help children.
Whereas many people were making the journey out and still are making the journey out of Gaza City on foot, you know, carrying what possessions they have on their shoulders or in their carts or shopping trolleys or whatever they whatever means they have commiss in some ways is in a luckier group and was able to pay for transport.
Just for transportation and immediate rental, you need four thousand year stumps, which cannot be afforded by the vast majority.
They can hear the bombing of Gaza City from where they are, but they are alive and in a humble place and in a calmer place.
Yeah, it must be an extraordinarily hard decision to make as a healthcare worker. How long you stay and at what point maybe you leave?
Absolutely and you know, none of us can imagine what it takes to make that kind of a decision. And I mean, I have so many friends in Gaza who have had the opportunity to leave Gaza but have remained and their immediate families, their wife and their children may have left Gaza for safety, but they have stayed both to care for their patients and to care for their extended family, their parents, their grandparents, the older people in their family who are just simply not able to evacuate.
The steadfastness of the Palestinians of Gazas is an incredible ethics and incredible humanity that is almost impossible for any of us outside to comprehend.
And so what is next now for Commis and the family that he does still have.
He has landed in a place and has somewhere to stay. I imagine knowing how is he will be seeking out the nearest hospital clinic or healthclare clinic or hospital so that he can continue to provide his service as a doctor.
He wants the world to know that he's just an ordinary person who wants to live a decent life, who wants to live in peace, who wants to live in peace in Gaza, who was always advocated for peace, somebody who was always advocated for saving lives and supporting people wherever he has worked, and that's been around the world, and I imagine that he will continue doing that wherever he has landed.
My message is a message of peace and a message of hope for everyone, not only for Partsinas, but for every individuals, for every national worldwide. This is my message. I hope together we can promote peace and tranquility. We can bring back hope to the people who have lost hopes in the future.
Thank you so much, Rachel, Thank you so much for speaking with me pleasure.
Thanks so much.
Ruby.
Also in the news today, the Reserve Bank has left interest rates on hold at three point six percent. While the board said inflation has fallen substantially since its peak in twenty twenty two, They also pointed to the global economy as a factor in their decision, specifically the impact of Trump's tariffs, along with conditions in the labor market and productivity. The RBA has previously lowered interest rates three times this year, and a Pentagon review into Orcus is ongoing,
according to Defense Minister Richard Miles. Yesterday, Nikayasia reported that the review was done and the Orcust deal was safe, but official confirmation has not been released by the Trump administration. Despite that, Miles says his confident the deal will go ahead. The review being conducted by noted Orcust skeptic Elbridge Colby is overdue and Ruby Jones, this is seven am. Thanks for listening.