Speaker 1: I first went to Gaza in February March twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: just before COVID was hitting the world, and visited again
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two and was supposed to return in
Speaker 1: October twenty twenty three. And when I first visited, I
Speaker 1: was blown away by Gaza's vibrancy.
Speaker 2: Doctor Rachel Coglin is a palliative care doctor based in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: On her visits to Gaza, she spent time in hospitals
Speaker 2: and healthcare facilities across the Strip.
Speaker 1: I spent most of my time with healthcare workers, many
Speaker 1: of whom have since become my friends.
Speaker 3: Dear beloved Sister Richer, thank you so much for your
Speaker 3: kind or destroy your kindness, for your unwavering support.
Speaker 2: One of those friends is doctor Carmis Elissi Comis.
Speaker 1: He's a pain medicine and a neuro rehabilitation specialist who
Speaker 1: has spent the last two years continuing to care for
Speaker 1: his patients. I'm not sure that there's a day gone
Speaker 1: by where he hasn't turned up to a hospital and
Speaker 1: start to move around between different hospitals, but has always
Speaker 1: remained in the north of Gaza in Gaza City.
Speaker 3: In personal level, I decided since the beginning of the war,
Speaker 3: to stay with my family, to protect my family, and
Speaker 3: to help the poor patients here in Gaza who are
Speaker 3: suffering from chronic pain and neurological diseases that I could
Speaker 3: be overhelp to them.
Speaker 2: As the death toll has mounted over the past two years,
Speaker 2: healthcare workers across Gaza have continued showing up to care
Speaker 2: for their patients in increasingly horrific circumstances. But now as
Speaker 2: Israel's bombardment of Gaza City intensifies, doctor Alessi has had
Speaker 2: to make a devastating decision stay and care for his
Speaker 2: patients or flee to save his family. I'm Ruby Jones,
Speaker 2: and you're listening to seven AM today doctor Rachel Cockland
Speaker 2: on her friend doctor Comis Alessie. It's Wednesday, October one. Rachel,
Speaker 2: You've been speaking to many healthcare workers in Gaza, including
Speaker 2: your friend doctor Carmis Alessi, regularly since October seven. So
Speaker 2: when Israels bombardment began two years ago, tell me about
Speaker 2: what your friends told you about the decision to stay
Speaker 2: and to keep the hospitals going.
Speaker 1: I think there is a deep sense of staying to
Speaker 1: care for your people. Every single health worker that I
Speaker 1: am in contact with, has not stopped caring, has not
Speaker 1: stopped turning up to work. Despite all personal risks. Comis
Speaker 1: has had opportunity to leave Gaza to live in safety
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world, and he made a
Speaker 1: very conscious decision at the beginning of this conflict to
Speaker 1: stay with his family to protect his fami family and
Speaker 1: that includes both his seven children and his wife and
Speaker 1: his huge extended family, and to continue to help caring
Speaker 1: for the poorer people in Gaza who was suffering.
Speaker 3: I had many good offers ready to live Gaza over
Speaker 3: the past seven hundred and fifteen days. I refused really
Speaker 3: and remained in Gaza, serving thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 3: and needed patience.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone I know in Gaza has stayed, no matter
Speaker 1: what profession, no matter what their background, they have stepped
Speaker 1: up to support and to care for their people. He
Speaker 1: has had to evacuate several times. I can't I've lost
Speaker 1: count of the number of times that he has had
Speaker 1: to move his house and move his family.
Speaker 3: I personally, with my family and my sisters and my
Speaker 3: mother and my brothers, have moved more than thirteen times
Speaker 3: from one place to another.
Speaker 1: Living in fear, living with very little water, difficulty getting food,
Speaker 1: no secure realty, and real attempts to stay and to
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on to hope.
Speaker 2: And what has come is said to you about his work,
Speaker 2: about what he's been seeing in these hospitals that he's
Speaker 2: been in over the past two years.
Speaker 1: Commiss has described, you know, in great detail, the decimation,
Speaker 1: and he coined at one point recently the one hundred
Speaker 1: ways to die in Gaza. Whether that's from drinking dirty water,
Speaker 1: unclean and unsafe water, snipers and quad copters, whether that's
Speaker 1: from aerial bombardment, whether that's from being a cancer patient
Speaker 1: and not having access to healthcare anymore, or a dialysis
Speaker 1: patient not having access to dialysis.
Speaker 3: More than eleven thousand cancer patients are left with no medicines,
Speaker 3: no chemotherapy in no radiotherapy, and no surgery and no
Speaker 3: pain relief, no palliative care for them.
Speaker 1: They haven't had a steady supply of you know, the
Speaker 1: right medicine or any medicines in fact, for a very
Speaker 1: very long time.
Speaker 3: Tell this moment, more than three hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 3: individuals in Gaza are suffering from infectious diseases ranging between
Speaker 3: gastroententritis the area, respiratory infections and infectious skin infections in
Speaker 3: the people in the refugee areas.
Speaker 2: And as that was happening, as medicines were running out
Speaker 2: and things were getting worse in Gaza, you would have
Speaker 2: been seeing the death counts come out sometimes daily, and
Speaker 2: I suppose trying to work out if it was your colleagues,
Speaker 2: if it was your friends who were among the people killed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's still a daily thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You wake up in the morning and check you WhatsApp
Speaker 1: messages in the hope that those little blue ticks appear
Speaker 1: and that they have read the messages. And I know
Speaker 1: that they are still alive. And some of my friends
Speaker 1: and my colleagues have been killed. My friend Mahmud Alhendi,
Speaker 1: who was a father to eight children and a grandchildren
Speaker 1: and a trained nurse who worked at Alali Hospital supporting
Speaker 1: women with breast cancer. He was murdered in March twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four as he stepped onto his balcony. He was
Speaker 1: snipered in the chest three times by Israeli forces. We
Speaker 1: had another colleague, doctor hammam Alo, who sent a message
Speaker 1: from his father's house near Al Shifa. We said, the
Speaker 1: sounds I'm hearing now worse than action in video games.
Speaker 1: Bombing hasn't stopped for hours, and he was debating whether
Speaker 1: to go to work that day to treat his dialysis patients.
Speaker 1: He was one of Gars's handful of mophrologists who provided
Speaker 1: central dialysis treatment for people with kidney disease. And just
Speaker 1: after he had sent that message, he was killed by
Speaker 1: an idea of bomb strike on his father's home, alongside
Speaker 1: his father and his brother in law and his father
Speaker 1: in law. And he was thirty six years old. And
Speaker 1: he had last message that morning actually and said in
Speaker 1: his very last message on WhatsApp, you're shouting me a
Speaker 1: lot to us.
Speaker 4: Please keep it up.
Speaker 1: And I don't know whether it's silly or not, but
Speaker 1: find myself sending them a tribute via WhatsApps if I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for them to message back, because I guess that's
Speaker 1: the only way that I have to say goodbye.
Speaker 2: Coming up the decision facing doctor carmis Alessi Rachel. In
Speaker 2: the past two weeks, Israel has stepped up its bombing
Speaker 2: of Gaza City. There's been air strikes, heavy artillery has
Speaker 2: flattened buildings, including hospitals. So what do we know about
Speaker 2: whether it is still possible to provide medical care in
Speaker 2: Gaza right now?
Speaker 1: So we know that I think the UN Human Rights
Speaker 1: off Us put out a release in the last few days.
Speaker 1: I think they've calculated seventeen in Israeli attacks on on
Speaker 1: near health facilities in Gaza City since the sixteenth of September,
Speaker 1: So in the last couple of weeks. And what we
Speaker 1: are hearing on the ground from healthcare workers that we
Speaker 1: know there who were still in those healthcare facilities and
Speaker 1: hospitals in Gaza City is that there are daily attacks
Speaker 1: on already decimated hospitals and clinics. More than half of
Speaker 1: the hospitals in Gaza City are no longer working. Al
Speaker 1: Shifa Hospital, the main hospital in Gaza, continues to be
Speaker 1: partially functional. Our Ali Hospital continues to be partially functional.
Speaker 1: Our Kuds run by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, continues
Speaker 1: to be partially functional. But when we say partially functional,
Speaker 1: that's incredibly limited service. And yet the healthcare staff stay
Speaker 1: and there are patients still in those hospitals needing urgent healthcare.
Speaker 2: And so what have these latest attacks meant for doctor Kamis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he Commis left a lengthy voice message last week.
Speaker 1: I think it was describing that after seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen days or so, he had finally made the decision
Speaker 1: that he needed to move him and his family from
Speaker 1: Gaza City.
Speaker 3: After seven hundred and fifteen days of being steadfast in
Speaker 3: Gaza and working with people here trying to save as
Speaker 3: many lives as possible, finally I decided to leave Gada
Speaker 3: to the middle zone of Gaza.
Speaker 1: Yes, his message was pained and exhausted, and his voice,
Speaker 1: you know, occasionally cracking through the message.
Speaker 3: They've added new tools of our parent massacres, using sixteen
Speaker 3: bombing of total of towers, buildings, detonation of thanks amongst
Speaker 3: residential blocks, and choosing by c helicopters or helicopters on people.
Speaker 1: He described having to leave behind his aunt, who had
Speaker 1: been killed only days before last week.
Speaker 3: I've lost my only aunt with her children and grandchildren,
Speaker 3: almost fifty three individuals of that family, four generations, has
Speaker 3: gone completely until now we cannot retrieve her body or
Speaker 3: the bodies or her kids and help children.
Speaker 1: Whereas many people were making the journey out and still
Speaker 1: are making the journey out of Gaza City on foot,
Speaker 1: you know, carrying what possessions they have on their shoulders
Speaker 1: or in their carts or shopping trolleys or whatever they
Speaker 1: whatever means they have commiss in some ways is in
Speaker 1: a luckier group and was able to pay for transport.
Speaker 3: Just for transportation and immediate rental, you need four thousand
Speaker 3: year stumps, which cannot be afforded by the vast majority.
Speaker 1: They can hear the bombing of Gaza City from where
Speaker 1: they are, but they are alive and in a humble
Speaker 1: place and in a calmer place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it must be an extraordinarily hard decision to make
Speaker 2: as a healthcare worker. How long you stay and at
Speaker 2: what point maybe you leave?
Speaker 1: Absolutely and you know, none of us can imagine what
Speaker 1: it takes to make that kind of a decision. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I have so many friends in Gaza who
Speaker 1: have had the opportunity to leave Gaza but have remained
Speaker 1: and their immediate families, their wife and their children may
Speaker 1: have left Gaza for safety, but they have stayed both
Speaker 1: to care for their patients and to care for their
Speaker 1: extended family, their parents, their grandparents, the older people in
Speaker 1: their family who are just simply not able to evacuate.
Speaker 1: The steadfastness of the Palestinians of Gazas is an incredible
Speaker 1: ethics and incredible humanity that is almost impossible for any
Speaker 1: of us outside to comprehend.
Speaker 2: And so what is next now for Commis and the
Speaker 2: family that he does still have.
Speaker 1: He has landed in a place and has somewhere to stay.
Speaker 1: I imagine knowing how is he will be seeking out
Speaker 1: the nearest hospital clinic or healthclare clinic or hospital so
Speaker 1: that he can continue to provide his service as a doctor.
Speaker 1: He wants the world to know that he's just an
Speaker 1: ordinary person who wants to live a decent life, who
Speaker 1: wants to live in peace, who wants to live in
Speaker 1: peace in Gaza, who was always advocated for peace, somebody
Speaker 1: who was always advocated for saving lives and supporting people
Speaker 1: wherever he has worked, and that's been around the world,
Speaker 1: and I imagine that he will continue doing that wherever
Speaker 1: he has landed.
Speaker 3: My message is a message of peace and a message
Speaker 3: of hope for everyone, not only for Partsinas, but for
Speaker 3: every individuals, for every national worldwide. This is my message.
Speaker 3: I hope together we can promote peace and tranquility. We
Speaker 3: can bring back hope to the people who have lost
Speaker 3: hopes in the future.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Rachel, Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: speaking with me pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much.
Speaker 4: Ruby.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, the Reserve Bank has left
Speaker 2: interest rates on hold at three point six percent. While
Speaker 2: the board said inflation has fallen substantially since its peak
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two, They also pointed to the global
Speaker 2: economy as a factor in their decision, specifically the impact
Speaker 2: of Trump's tariffs, along with conditions in the labor market
Speaker 2: and productivity. The RBA has previously lowered interest rates three
Speaker 2: times this year, and a Pentagon review into Orcus is ongoing,
Speaker 2: according to Defense Minister Richard Miles. Yesterday, Nikayasia reported that
Speaker 2: the review was done and the Orcust deal was safe,
Speaker 2: but official confirmation has not been released by the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Despite that, Miles says his confident the deal will go ahead.
Speaker 2: The review being conducted by noted Orcust skeptic Elbridge Colby
Speaker 2: is overdue and Ruby Jones, this is seven am. Thanks
Speaker 2: for listening.