On October 7, Dr Noa Rosenfeld-Yehoshua was on duty as a paediatrician at the Assuta Medical Centre in Ashdod, Israel, where she is head of the Intensive Paediatric Unit. She and other colleagues were among the many health providers and workers who responded to the Hamas attacks that claimed some 1400 lives and injured over 4600 people. More than 200 people were taken hostage.
WHO recently met Dr Rosenfeld-Yehoshua in London on the day she was due to return to Israel after a visit to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Sitting with her 8-year-old daughter Abigail, she described what happened on October 7 and the mental health impact on her community and country.
“It was a holiday,” she said. “I was on call, and I needed to go to work. Where I work is actually quite close to Gaza. In the morning, there were sirens that went on, again and again, tons of sirens. Our family went into a safe room.”
Time passed, the sirens did not stop, and the family soon learned of the attacks by Hamas. Leaving her own frightened children, Dr Rosenfeld-Yehoshua went immediately to the hospital: she was on shift that day.
Together with her team of Jewish and Arab health-care colleagues, she worked to comfort patients and parents searching for children, and to stabilize badly injured patients.
Dr Rosenfeld-Yehoshua describes one of the first patients she met: an elegant 50-year-old woman in glasses, still wearing her pyjamas. “She was so worried. She was sure that she had a bullet in her arm. I checked her and said, ‘Look, you really look okay, I’m really happy to say I think you’re fine.’ She said, ‘Oh, thank you so much. But you know, my sister was shot.’ And then suddenly I understood that these people have been through something that I’ve never seen.”
Working side by side to care for patients
Dr Rosenfeld-Yehoshua explained that, because October 7 is a Jewish holiday, many of the staff on shift responding to the attacks were from Arab communities.
“In the emergency ward, what I saw was doctors from very different backgrounds, religions, all kinds of Jews, Arabs, working together. Everybody was trying to sort out a situation that was very, very difficult for the hospital to cope with.”
As they worked, many staff were deeply concerned about their own loved ones, some of whom were ringing them from safe rooms, with fears for their safety and for supplies of food
“I come from a family of people that are very committed to peace,” she says. “My mom was a big demonstrator for peace. My dad has done many things, always working together with Jews, Arabs. That was a very big value in our family.”
The impact of the attacks on mental health
When the sirens went off on October 7, Dr Rosenfeld-Yehoshua’s daughter Abigail spent 3 days sheltering in a safe room at her aunt’s home.
When WHO met with them, Noa and Abigail had been visiting family members in London on a pre-arranged visit. How does Abigail feel about going to back to Israel?
“Scared,” the little girl says. “I don’t want to sleep in my own room. I’m too scared to sleep in my room.”
Among Dr Rosenfeld-Yehoshua’s community, many parents have been scared to send their children back to school or even let them out of their sight. To resume some level of normalcy after the attacks, she hosted art, drama and piano classes in her own home for local children. Among her colleagues, there is also a huge need for mental health support.
“I see the nurses working in the ICU. I see the doctors that I work with. Everyone is afraid to leave their kids, afraid to walk in the street. There has never been such a thing. People are worried that someone will harm them.”
Trying to explain these feelings, Dr Rosenfeld-Yehoshua says, “It’s very important to understand that, when actions like that are done to people that are exactly like you, you discover that, although you thought you were in a safe environment, it’s not safe at all. The worry is so overwhelming that you can’t move. You don’t want to let your kids move. It’s important to understand that, in order to make Israel go back to be a normal society, we have a lot of mental issues to deal with.”
Ever since the October 7 attacks, citing international humanitarian law, WHO along with the wider UN family has called for the immediate release of all hostages, along with urgent medical access to them, including the many with chronic conditions who need urgent medical care. Conflicts and other health emergencies can have long-lasting consequences for people’s mental health, especially as situations are prolonged.
As well, WHO and UN partners have called for a ceasefire and an unimpeded, safe and sustained access to health and humanitarian assistance for the civilian population of Gaza. WHO condemns attacks on health facilities and health workers under any circumstances, emphasizing that health cannot be a target.
