At our campaign meeting on November 6th, 2023 we discussed the CQC report on the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, the CQC report on all the maternity providers nationally, infant mortality at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital as reported in the MBRAACE report, the appointment of a joint chair of the board with Liverpool University Hospitals Trust, the cuts imposed by the ICB, the shortages of midwives, obstetricians, and concerns about women’s experience of giving birth. We also discussed our wonderful demonstration on the 7th of October 2023.

Although we discussed all these issues, our conversation kept coming back to the babies and children in Gaza and the hospitals there under the horrific bombing by Israeli forces. We could not ignore the killing of babies and children in Gaza the problems of women giving birth under a rain of bombs, and the terrible state of the health service in Gaza.

Our hearts go out to those who died, all who are injured or bereaved, and to the families of all the children killed injured, or kidnapped, definitely including those killed in Israel by Hamas.

“Women, children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden of the escalation of hostilities in the occupied Palestinian territory, both as casualties and in reduced access to health services, warn the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

As of 3 November, according to Ministry of Health data, 2326 women and 3760 children have been killed in the Gaza strip, representing 67% of all casualties, while thousands more have been injured. This means that 420 children are killed or injured every day, some of them only a few months old.”

Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital  Campaign focuses on the issues around women’s health, maternity, infant mortality, the NHS and NHS staff, restructuring legally and organisationally for privatization, and the diversion of funds to private profit. We focus also on staffing and working conditions, but the situation in Gaza cannot be ignored. Too many women and babies, doctors, and nurses have died.

Liverpool Women’s Hospital itself was attacked by a lone bomber so we know the experience of terror attacks. Mill Road Hospital, one of our predecessors, was bombed during the Blitz and the stories of that incident live on amongst us.

St Luke’s Church, just over a mile from Liverpool Women’s Hospital, stands at the top of Bold Street in memorial to that Blitz and to the demand that such attacks on civilians never happen again, but bombs are raining down on the people of Gaza as they did on Liverpool more than eighty years ago. Around four thousand people in Liverpool died during the blitz according to official figures, but it may have been more. In Gaza, it is ten thousand dead and the bombs are still falling. The United Nations has called it a children’s graveyard.

Just as the stories of the bombing of Mill Road Hospital are still retold today, in eighty years so will the tales of bombing Gaza. For the sake of the survivors in Gaza and Israel, the children must grow up in peace.

For now, the demand must be for a ceasefire.

Our hearts ache for the women giving birth under bombing, lacking proper medical care, and anesthetics. Our admiration goes out to the hospital staff who stay and care for their patients. One report says “Some women experience postpartum bleeding and we can’t manage it… we’ve performed hysterectomies on women who could have been saved. But to save blood, we’ve made the decision to remove the uterus to increase the chances of not losing the patient.” #Gaza.

There is a direct appeal for help from medics in the UK to give remote aid.

You can donate here https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate

There was a truce during Christmas in World War 1 commemorated in a statue at St Lukes. A ceasefire is not impossible. It’s a choice to be made by people who were born of women. We join the call for a ceasefire now.

Added on Saturday 11th November morning.We hear that a hospital is now also under full scale land attack and that the power for the incubators has failed.

There are no words.