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'Whatever you see online, multiply it by ten' - Canadian doctors highlight Gaza's unprecedented child trauma, urge immediate action at Ottawa rally

'Whatever you see online, multiply it by ten' - Canadian doctors highlight Gaza's unprecedented child trauma, urge immediate action at Ottawa rally

"Canadian healthcare workers gathered to raise their voices for the children of Gaza in Ottawa on Saturday, describing the dire situation facing Palestinian families and children during the ongoing conflict. Footage shows demonstrators with placards listening to speeches beside toys and photos symbolising Gaza's children and observing a moment of silence for those killed. The event also featured doctors addressing the crowd and public readings. Dr Hanan Farhat criticised Canada's Gaza Special Measures programme, calling it a failure. "Only about 860 people from Gaza have been able to flee the genocide. And when they get here, they don't have settlement services, or at least the settlement offices don't know how to help the families." "I've met children who think that the Israeli army is at the door, they wake up crying every night. I've met children who went into the dental chair, and when they hear the whirl of the drill, they think it's a drone. These children are very, very traumatised, and this is nothing we've seen before," she shared. Dr Dpang Chi, who previously volunteered in Gaza, condemned attacks on healthcare workers. "I witnessed firsthand what the Israeli military is doing to the people, to the Palestinian people in Gaza. Starving them, forcibly starving them, attacking hospitals and clinics." He also recalled reports of health workers in Gaza being singled out, tortured, and killed for "just trying to take care of their people and their community." Dr Rizwan Minhas, who worked in Gaza in 2024, stressed, "Whatever you see online, just multiply that by 10. The whole of Gaza is a catastrophe right now. There are no places to live, there are no schools, there's nothing there. Even the hospitals were missing medications," underlining that 30 percent of the casualties are children. The Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian group launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and kidnapping more than 200 others, according to Israeli officials. Israel's subsequent military operations in Gaza have killed more than 63,300 people and injured over 159,800 others at the time of publication, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health."