Dr James Smith, who used to work at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza until earlier this year, has said Gaza’s health system collapsed in late October and it has not recovered since.

“That is because the supplies, resources, specialists and so on required have either not entered into Gaza or where such commodities or resources made available, it is impossible to work in a context of such extreme violence and insecurity,” said Smith.

He told Al Jazeera from London that “the hospital is barely able to cope”, adding that a colleague there sent him a recent message, in which he called the situation “catastrophic”.

“They have very limited means to provide care to patients, while patients are presenting some of the most horrific trauma-related injuries and also non-trauma-related healthcare problems I have ever seen,” he said.

People, often children, show up multiple times a day with severe traumatic amputations with more than one limp and such injuries in normal circumstances require prolonged specialist care that is simply not available at the current time, Smith added.