Indonesia Hospital in Gaza Always Crowded with Patients, 400 People Seek Treatment Each Day

Jakarta, 9 Jumadil Awwal 1437/17 February 2016 (MINA)  –  Former construction manager of the newly-opened Indonesian Hospital in Gaza Edy Wahyudi said that the two-storey hospital is always crowded  because patients who come for treatment amounted to 400 people every day since its opening on 27 December 2015.

“The hospital is always crowded by Gazans, especially those living in the northern part of the enclave. Even their number  had ever reached nearly 1,600 patients on January 3,” he said on the sidelines of a simple ceremony to welcome the arrival of three volunteers from Gaza landed at the International Airport Soekarno-Hatta on Tuesday night.

The three volunteers of the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C), recruited from the Al-Fatah Islamic Boarding School in the West Java city of Bogor, are Edy Wahyudi (Site Manager of the Gaza Indonesian Hospital), Karidi and Miyanto, arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport at 22:40 pm after a long flight from Cairo with a stopover at the Abu Dhabi Airport.

Funded by the Indonesian NGO with donations collected from Indonesian people, the $9 million facility has 110 beds, compared to the 62 beds of the old local hospital, and will make a big difference to the local population.

“We came to Gaza in 2009 and we saw patients and no medicine and not enough hospitals,” said Edy Wahyudi of Indonesia’s Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, which funded the facility.

Wahyudi, who oversaw the construction, said the funding had come from individuals in Indonesia who wanted to help Gazans. So, the rooms in the hospital are