Sanctioned U of O doctor describes harrowing conditions in Rafah after humanitarian trip

Dr. Yipeng Ge, right, recently returned from a weeklong assignment in Rafah, southern Gaza. He travelled there with an aid group called Humanity Auxilium. (Yipeng Ge/X)

An Ottawa doctor who recently returned from a weeklong assignment in Rafah, southern Gaza, says he was astounded by the desperate conditions people in the war-torn region are facing.

"Nothing could have prepared me psychologically for what I saw," said Dr. Yipeng Ge, formerly a resident physician at the University of Ottawa's faculty of medicine.

Last November, Ge was suspended by the university over pro-Palestinian social media posts. He was reinstated a few months later in January, but he has not returned to the institution.

After that experience, Ge told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning that he got in touch with "really amazing people" who are doing humanitarian work in Rafah.

"I think it is a duty and an obligation when we have skills and expertise to offer [assistance]," he said.

Months of violence have followed the events of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killed approximately 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.

Since that day, Israeli strikes have killed approximately 29,000 people, according to Gaza's Hamas-led health authority.

Ge linked up with an aid group called Humanity Auxilium and went with a team of doctors to Rafah, which has been ravaged by war and is under threat of an Israeli ground offensive.

If all the hostages taken by Hamas are not released by March 10, Israeli officials have said they plan to storm Rafah, where more than one million of the 2.3 million Palestinians have sought shelter.

Palestinians rescue survivors after an Israeli strike in Rafah on Feb. 24, 2024. (Hatem Ali/The Associated Press)

Additional aid needed

Ge said the patients he met were "facing starvation, malnutrition, bacterial infections of the skin [and] the lungs that we couldn't treat with antibiotics because there were none."

Colleagues from the World Health Organization recommended measuring the circumference of a child's upper arm to detect malnutrition, but Ge said his team didn't have a measuring tape so he used his own hand.

"I wrapped my index finger and my thumb around the entirety of a child's upper arm and their lower leg. And this child was nine or 10 years old," he said.

"That was the sickest child I saw that day."

A Palestinian child displaced by the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza carries jerry cans at a makeshift tent camp in Rafah on Feb. 19, 2024. (Mohammed Dahman/Associated Press)

His team brought some medications, "but that amount of aid is a drop in the ocean with what they really need," Ge said.

Humanitarian groups are calling for more aid to be allowed into Gaza to help with the intense and worsening crisis there.

Canada's Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen said a significant amount of aid is waiting in Egypt or Jordan for delivery, but only a limited amount can be shipped through the land border to Gaza.

Hussen added that Canada is considering the "possibility and feasibility" of airdropping aid into Gaza. Other countries including the U.K., Netherlands and France have collaborated with Jordan on previous drops.

"We saw thousands of trucks lined up at the Rafah border as we got in," Ge said. "They're letting in aid workers [and] health-care workers, but these trucks are what they need."

Constant air strikes 'normalized'

Ge also described the experience of "living under siege" as drones and jets constantly flew overhead.

Young children sometimes pointed out the objects in the sky, Ge said. "They know the sounds so well at this point that it's become normalized."

In one instance, Ge said he and his team were sitting in the makeshift home of a doctor and his family. Suddenly, a nearby missile strike caused the building to shake.

"We were so taken aback, but none of their family members flinched," he recalled. "Constant air strikes have been normalized in Gaza."

Palestinians assess the destruction after an Israeli strike in Rafah on Feb. 24, 2024. (Fatima Shbair/Associated Press)

Ge said he can't imagine what doctors who live in Rafah are going through as they "continue to work for their community and people despite the unimaginable happening to them."

"The resilience, the courage, the perseverance that I've seen and even the joy that I've experienced with them is unparalleled."

Despite the difficult experience, Ge said that he would "most certainly" return.