KENT, Ohio — "There's a lack of medication, a lack of care, a lack of pain medication, a lack of chemotherapy drugs for cancer patients, food is running scarce, water is running scarce."
This is how Steve Sosebee, President and Founder of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) describes conditions in Gaza right now. His organization provides medical and humanitarian aid to children, with affiliated doctors performing 2,000 surgeries a year on Palestinian youths. They have also helped build pediatric cancer units, emergency departments, and ICUs.
"So, for aid organizations like ours — for PCRF and other aid organizations — being able to address the needs on the ground is almost impossible because of the closure of borders," Sosebee explained. "Since Oct. 7, nothing has entered the Gaza Strip — not one piece of bread, not one pain medication, has entered the Gaza Strip.
The PCRF is fundraising for both humanitarian and medical aid that they will try to get over the border to Gaza, with Sosbee saying he's already getting requests for specific items from doctors there.
"We're in the process of procuring both medical supplies and medical equipment that will go directly to the hospitals and provide things like external fixators and sutures and other medical aid that's been exhausted due to the huge number of trauma patients," he told 3News. "And we're also a humanitarian organization that will be providing, like I said before, food, water, shelter."
