Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to offer folks a content warning of this statement which will contain graphic description of a hurt child. These kinds of firsthand accounts break the hearts of members of our NWT community every day. This is an account of a pediatrician in Gaza.
In the first few hours of my work, I treated an approximately oneyearold boy. His right arm and right leg had been blown off by a bomb and flesh was still hanging off the foot. He had a blood-stained diaper, which remained, but there was no leg below. I treated the baby while he lay on the ground. There were no stretchers available because all the beds had already been taken considering that many people were also trying to use the hospital as a shelter or safe place for their families. Next to him, there was a man who was on his last breaths. He had been actively dying for the last 24 hours and flies were already on him. All the while, a woman was brought in and declared dead on arrival.
This oneyearold had blood pouring into his chest cavity. He needed a chest tube so he wouldn't asphyxiate on his own blood, but there were neither chest tubes nor blood pressure cuffs available in pediatric sizes. No morphine had been given in the chaos, and it wasn't available.
This patient in America would have immediately gone to the OR but instead the orthopedic surgeon bandaged the stumps and said he couldn't take him to the operating theater because there were more pressing emergencies. And I tried to imagine what was more pressing than a oneyearold with no hand and no legs who was choking on his own blood. That to me was symbolic of the impossible choices inflicted on doctors in Gaza and how truly cataclysmic this situation is.
Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the Premier at the appropriate time.
Thank you, Member from Great Slave. Members' statements. Member from Monfwi.
