British surgeon volunteering in Gaza hospital details 'dire situation'

GAZA and LONDON -- This is not the first time Dr. Victoria Rose has visited the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, but she said the current situation on the ground is the worst she's ever seen it.

Rose, a London-based consultant plastic surgeon, has been volunteering in weekslong stints at Gaza hospitals since the ongoing Israel-Hamas war erupted in October 2023. Most recently, she spent the month of May operating on the wounded at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, the largest referral hospital -- and now the only one of its kind still functioning -- in southern Gaza.

"I think it's mainly the volume of patients that are coming in now. When we were here in August, we were seeing a lot of bomb victims, but not as many as we're seeing now," Rose told ABC News during an interview at the hospital on Saturday.

"We are seeing patients, we're getting them on the operating table, we are cleaning the wounds and we are making a plan for their reconstruction," she added. "And then we're sending them back to the ward and then we're not getting a chance to get them back and do the reconstruction because so many more new bomb injuries come in and then we start again. So it's very difficult to keep up with this ongoing workload that's coming through the door."

Rose said Israeli forces have been relentlessly bombing the area in recent weeks and, as a result, Nasser Medical Complex has seen a surge in patients. ABC News was allowed into the hospital's operating room as Rose performed extensive surgery on an 18-year-old patient, who she said "had quite a significant injury to his right arm" from a blast.

"If they just stop bombing us for a couple of days, it would mean that we could catch up with the backload," Rose said. "I woke up this morning at 2 a.m. to nonstop bombing and all I could think about is the number of patients that that's going to bring through the door that we can't cope with here."

The Israel Defense Forces launched an extensive new ground operation in Gaza last month targeting Hamas militants and what it called "terrorist infrastructure sites above and below ground."

At least 54,381 people in Gaza have been killed and 124,054 have been wounded, according to Gaza's Hamas-run Ministry of Health, since the war began after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. At least 20 living hostages remain in Hamas captivity.

Bed occupancy at Nasser Medical Complex is currently over 100%, while 47% of essential drugs are out of stock at the hospital along with 65% of all consumable items, according to Rose.

"So we really are on our knees at the moment. We don't have anything," she told ABC News. "And on top of that, we have a really, really depleted health care staff."

"We've lost a lot of them because they've been displaced and they've had to move, so they can't get to the hospital," she continued. "We've a lost a lot them because they have been detained or they've left Gaza. The staff that we have are tired. They've been working nonstop since the war started. So it's a really difficult situation all around."

The hospital is located about a mile from where active fighting is currently taking place between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, according to Rose, who fears that Israeli troops will "encircle us" and "cut us off completely" rather than evacuate the complex.

"So it's a really dire situation because if Nasser goes out of function, all of the patients that you see here on the ICU department will die -- and this is one of three ICUs that we have at Nasser," Rose said, referring to the critically ill patients lying in beds behind her. "Plus, the fact that none of the other hospitals around us -- even combined -- could take the number of patients that we have here."

Rose said she's also seen the effects of malnutrition on the civilian population, particularly children, after Israel's 11-week blockade on all food and other essential supplies entering Gaza. Since May 19, Israel has allowed a limited amount of humanitarian aid into the Hamas-governed Palestinian territory, but the United Nations and other organizations have repeatedly warned it's far from enough and that famine is imminent.

"We have had a patient in our operating theater where we've had to cancel the procedure because he was so malnourished and we didn't feel that he would survive the surgery," Rose told ABC News. "The other thing that we are noticing is that people are not able to heal their wounds as effectively as they should do. So because of the malnutrition, they're not getting the essential nutrients and vitamins they need."

Cell turnover -- the process of producing new skin cells -- "is poor, so they're not healing," Rose said.

She added, "Coupled with that, there's a massive spike in infection this time compared to when we were here in August. Everybody's wounds get infected and that's a real sign of malnutrition."

ABC News' Helena Skinner contributed to this report.