Anchor: Andy Clark Vaughn is an emergency nurse and a mission volunteer with the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association. And she joins us now live from Gaza City. Andy, as I understand it, you’ve been there for about two weeks now. Just talk us through your initial impressions.
Andy: Yeah. That’s correct. I’ve been here for about two weeks. Getting in was quite complicated. There were a lot of checks and balances and a lot of forms to fill out and my application had to get approved by several different committees, if you will, the UN, the WHO, the IDF etc. and then just waiting. Up until the last minute before I could actually enter into Gaza, I could have gotten rejected. So it’s a little tenuous there, but we made it, myself and a doctor from Australia named Dan. And yeah, I’ve been here for two weeks, and I’ve seen a couple of the different ERs and I’m absolutely impressed by how these emergency rooms have been completely decimated, and they are rebuilding everything from the ground up, and they have nothing. Most of the expensive equipment is destroyed, like dialysis machines, ultrasound machines. There’s one working CAT scan in Mamadani hospital right now. So our patients will have to travel there if they need a CT scan for example, sometimes waiting for more than an hour to get the scan, which means that life-saving interventions are being postponed because of that. We just lack a lot of the basic nursing equipment. We’re short on blood pressure machines, wound care supplies, for example. But at the end of the day, I’m just overwhelmingly impressed by the nurses that I work with because they make everything happen regardless of what they have available to them.
Anchor: But Andy, how does it make you feel when you realize that actually all of these hospitals in Gaza, firstly, shouldn’t have been destroyed in the first place. And wecondly, if Israel wanted to, they could allow all that equipment, that you’ve been talking about, in very easily. This is something that’s being forced upon them. I mean, how does that make you feel when you see it firsthand?
Andy: A really good question. My immediate answer to you is I feel rage. I feel a deep sadness. It’s so many children here. What have they done? You know, they should be laughing, enjoying having a place to run around, being with their family. I mean, at this point, I’m just watching generation upon generation of family names being completely erased off the register. I feel very sad and to be honest, I feel somewhat guilty being from the USA, knowing exactly what my government has been doing. So it was really important for me to join an organization like PANZMA, because they’re really on the ground getting stuff done, getting medical equipment to the different ERs. For example, Al Aqsa, they put in a new X-ray machine. So for me, I was able to channel that rage that I feel and that deep sadness by coming over here. I’m very honored to be here. I’m learning a lot from the nurses here as well.
Anchor: Andy, I’m just going to ask you a personal question, because you’ve touched upon it. You say that you felt rage at your government and what they’re doing in supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and that’s why you came to Gaza. Just take us through when you realized that.
Andy: When I realized I wanted to come here?
Anchor: Yes, When you realized that that you wanted to do something because of your own government.
Andy: My family, we’ve always been very much pro-Palestinian. We really uphold this idea that nobody is free until everybody’s free. And I think that after October 7th, just watching the response and the devastation that came after that, it made it clear to me that I wanted to give back to the community. I have a lot of privilege. I have education. I have access to clean water. I have access to food. I have access to healthcare. And if I can channel my rage that I feel and come over and at least be some sort of an ambassador to the people here to let them know that… Sorry, you’re going to hear the bombs dropping… just to let them know that not every American thinks the way that a lot of our governmental officials have voted. That’s really important to me. They have a really strong base of support in the US and I want them to know that.
Anchor: Andy, just another last question. I know the bombs are dropping and you can actually hear them where you are. But last question to you is – just talk us through the kinds of injuries, the kinds of things that you’re seeing in the last two weeks that you’ve been there.
Andy: Shrapnel injuries are overwhelming, the burns from the blast, the explosives. I think on my second day here at Al Kuds hospital, I counted over a 100 bombs dropped in the vicinity of where I am between the hours of 4 and 6. That’s pretty normative. Just the vast number of explosions that are taking place in Gaza City. And then that’s just a small piece of the strip. So it’s a lot – but also in the sense that even if they haven’t been hit by shrapnel or a gun they are affected by how cold the air is, everything is dirty, everything is smoky. I’m seeing a lot of pharyngitis (sore throat) laryngitis, upper respiratory infections, wheezing – we do a lot of nebulizer treatments in the ER. The fuel, you know, before I got on here, the generator was cut off. We’re running out of fuel and the hospitals run on the generator. And it’s amazing what they’ve done. They’re burning plastic to create an alternative fuel source, but with that comes health issues, breathing issues because you’re burning a toxic chemical to create a fuel. So, there’s smoke everywhere. You taste it. It tastes like metal constantly and there is dust because these buildings are being pulverized to the ground. There’s a lot of gastrointestinal disorders, gastroenteritis which I myself had for 4 days. We’re seeing overwhelming malnutrition. Food is scarce pretty much. I eat and I eat well. I eat a tomato, a cucumber, and I eat rice pretty much every single day. That’s privileged food. People are struggling to get the basics like rice. Because of the wounds and the trauma that’s happening to the broken bones, the brains, whatever – we need protein. These people need protein. They need nutrients and they’re not getting it. It’s impossible to get them the nutrients they need because even as an aid worker, I’m very limited in what I’m allowed to bring in. The rule is that I’m allowed to bring in what I will personally be able to use in the time that I’m here. I know there’s some wiggle room with that, but, things get confiscated. Wound care supplies get confiscated. The biggest thing that really upset me was baby formulas getting confiscated at the border.
Anchor: Sorry. When you say confiscated, who is taking that stuff? Baby formula is being confiscated. That just sounds wrong, frankly.
Andy: It does. So you have two border crossings. I came in from Aman, Jordan. And you’ll have to excuse me, I don’t remember the bridge that I was on, but when you come in to Gaza, you have to go through Israel, the Israel border crossing, and they scan your bag, and if they flag it, they’ll go through it. And pretty much all our aid workers’ bags were flagged and sifted through or re-x-rayed. I was with a plastic surgeon who’s renowned for her burn care and they completely destroyed her luggage and we’re not really sure what they took, if they took anything. And then there was another guy in our group who had brought a pot of honey and apparently that was too much honey for him to be able to have. So, you never know what’s going to get confiscated, but yeah, formula. Especially if you don’t look like you breastfeeding. I’m sure they’re wondering like why do you have formula? So, that usually gets taken. And if a woman’s body is malnourished, she’s not going to be producing baby’s milk. And colostrum is huge for neonates. So, what we’ve been seeing here is moms trying to do their utmost best, mixing water, which is often contaminated, with beans or lentils just to make something of sustenance to get these kids fed and get them nutrients. Bones are not reknitting back together, wounds are just not healing here because you need to have protein. You have to have stable nutrition. And so, you know, we run a wound care clinic I think every day of the week in the morning, and I’m just seeing a lot of wounds that just will not heal and they’re probably not going to heal, which means amputations. So, we see a lot of amputations here in Gaza. Yeah, immune systems are so compromised here because of the malnutrition. We don’t have vaccines. The tetanus vaccine, I mean that’s a big deal – we don’t have access to that here, You know people are stressed out and we’re not really accounting for that because we don’t have time for that, because again we’re focusing on broken bones, we’re focusing on soft tissue infections, we’re seeing a lot of rashes and skin infections that,you know, we wouldn’t be seeing normally if water wasn’t contaminated and if the air wasn’t contaminated, and if people were getting proper nutrition. I I think the other important thing especially as a woman that concerns me, is that there is a complete lack of menstrual aid products. So women are reusing cloth and they are washing it in the contaminated water sources and they’re getting vaginal infections. You know, women who are able to breastfeed, we’re seeing a lot of abscesses because again it’s a hygiene thing. If you can’t wash your breast, you’re going to get abscesses that grow because you have bacteria there. You’re going to see candida in the mouths of the babies who are breastfeeding just because you have a hygiene issue here. That’s a big deal. The other day I had a woman who brought in her infant and the diaper was clearly days old. Had wiped off poop in it. And in my complete ignorant mind, I went to throw it away and the mom was very clearly like, “Do not do that. Do not do that.” And then it hit me that this woman doesn’t even have access to diapers. So, I just padded the diaper with gauze and really hoped that she came back the next day for more gauze if she needed it for her baby. Because again, baby skin is sensitive. You can’t have it sitting against urine and fecal matter for amounts of time without it breaking down and causing more infection.
Anchor: Andy, it’s been amazing. It’s been amazing listening to you, and it’s been amazing that you’ve been able to tell these stories under the pressure that you are under. So, thank you very much. That’s Andy Clark Vaughn there live for us in Gaza City.
Andy: Thank you for having me.