Israeli medical staff whistleblow to BBC on mistreatment of Gazan detainee patients

Medical workers at Israeli hospitals told BBC News that Palestinian detainees from Gaza were “shackled and blindfolded” while they received treatment, the BBC published on Tuesday.

One practitioner described the conditions as “torture,” as they detailed how some detainees were tied naked while others wore diapers. 

One source accused a military hospital was accused of allowing detainees to experience an “unacceptable amount of pain.”

An additional source told the BBC that painkillers were being administered “selectively” and “in a very limited way” during invasive procedures at Israeli public treatment centres. 

One whistleblower claimed that a doctor had denied an elderly patient painkillers while they were opening up a recent, infected amputation wound.

Medical malpractice

“[The patient] started trembling from pain, and so I stop and say ‘we can’t go on, you need to give him analgesia’,” the whistleblower said, adding that the doctor had told the patient it was too late for painkillers.

In another reported case, a Hamas terrorist was denied increased morphine and anaesthetic and, as a result, he repeatedly woke up during surgeries.

Some public hospitals were reportedly reluctant to treat detainees, leaving Gazans to be treated in makeshift facilities without the proper resources to treat critically ill patients.

A detainee released from one such facility told the BBC that his leg was amputated after he was denied treatment for an infected wound. A senior doctor at the facility which treated the former detainee denied that the amputation was the result of medical negligence, but acknowledged the restraints were used for “dehumanization.”

 The senior anaesthesiologist for Sde Teiman hospital, Yoel Donchin, claimed that restraints and diapers were used on all detainees.

“The army create the patient to be 100% dependent, like a baby,” he said. “You are cuffed, you are with diapers, you need water, you need everything – it’s dehumanization”.

The IDF told the BBC, in response to the accusations of restraints being used excessively, that the handcuffing of detainees in the Sde Teiman hospital was “examined individually and daily, and carried out in cases where the security risk requires it.”

The IDF further responded that diapers were used “only for detainees who have undergone medical procedures for which their movement is limited.”