Meet Janaa: The Story Behind Janaa’s Workshop
October 15, 2026
Help reopen an operating room at Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza. Your donation will help fund a replacement anaesthesia machine, restoring essential surgical capacity expected to support 300 patients each month.
The operating room at Al-Awada Hospital in Nuseirat is out of service because its anesthesia machine has broken down.
The machine had been in use for more than 14 years. The spare parts needed to fix it are no longer available in Gaza, and new machines cannot currently be brought in because of the continuing blockade. The hospital has found a replacement machine in excellent condition that is available locally. Your donation helps pay for it, so the operating room can be restored and used for painless surgery again.
Al-Awda started in 1989 as a primary health care center in Nuseirat refugee camp and has since grown into a hospital. It now serves more than 250,000 people in Gaza’s middle area, including many displaced families, women and children. Its services include emergency care, maternity care, and surgery.
Most people never see an anesthesia machine, but almost every operation depends on one.
During surgery, the machine delivers a measured mix of oxygen and anesthetic gas to keep the patient asleep and free of pain. It also helps the patient breathe and lets the anesthetist watch their breathing and other vital signs throughout the procedure.
With anesthesia machines broken and medicine in short supply, doctors across Gaza have described being forced to operate on patients who are awake and in pain. For the patient, that can mean feeling the cut of the scalpel, the cleaning of a wound, or the setting of a bone. For the doctor, it means choosing between operating while the patient suffers and not operating at all.
Dr Medhat Abbas, who leads Gaza’s Ministry of Health, told us what it is like when there is nothing left to ease patients’ pain.
“They keep crying of pain, and there are no painkillers. It is torture.”
Dr Medhat Abbas
No one should have to go through surgery like this. A working anesthesia machine means patients can be kept asleep and pain free, and surgeons can operate safely.
Help reopen the operating room at Al-Awda
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