For many, the ongoing humanitarian crises in Gaza have fallen to the wayside of the American consciousness, replaced by the immediacy of domestic issues.
But for San Diego resident Amanda Nasser, a local emergency room nurse volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the devastation is not a distant headline — it’s a harsh, lived reality.
Nasser, who was born and raised in San Diego, earned her undergraduate degree at San Diego State University, and her masters as a family nurse practitioner at UC Irvine. Since the beginning of her nursing career, she has worked in UC San Diego ‘s emergency department.
Nasser traveled to Gaza in mid-August as a volunteer with Glia, a medical solidarity organization that empowers low-resource communities to build sustainable, locally-driven healthcare projects.
For Nasser, who is a first-generation Palestinian-American, public service is a principle that has been ingrained in her since childhood.
“My journey to Nasser Hospital began long before I ever set foot in Gaza,” Nasser said. “It was a calling sparked in childhood, watching my parents use our home as a place of refuge for the underserved, including a young boy from Gaza who had lost his eye in a bombing. His story seared itself into my heart and ignited a lifelong commitment to humanitarian work.”
At the hospital, Nasser tends to a female patient suffering a gunshot wound to the head. She is in critical condition, this mother of ten children, who went to the site of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, a U.S. nonprofit organization established in 2025 to distribute aid.
The woman traveled along with hundreds of others in hopes of retrieving aid for her family, but instead became another victim of what medical personnel describe as “daily patterns” of people being maimed and killed while seeking supplies at aid relief sites as Gaza experiences a stage 5 famine due to a nearly two-year-long blockade of the region.
According to the United Nations, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food, 859 in the vicinity of the GHF sites since May.
Nasser and the medical staff eventually remove a bullet from the woman’s head, but despite their best efforts, she ultimately dies from her injuries. The agonizing cries of her family in the hospital’s halls are a gut-wrenching sound, a pain so profound that Nasser says it feels impossible to bear.
Every day, the hospital is inundated with hundreds of people, as trauma patients pour in nonstop for hours following mass casualty events. That same afternoon, Nasser Hospital received approximately 200 injured Palestinians from GHF sites. An overwhelming number of them are children, many suffering gunshot wounds to the head, followed by the chest and pelvis.
Nasser Hospital is not only one of the largest hospitals in the Gaza Strip, but also one of the last functioning hospitals in all of Gaza. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has reportedly killed at least 63,459 people, including 18,430 children, since Oct. 7, 2023.
In Gaza, however, not even medical facilities are safe from Israel’s airstrikes. On Aug. 20, the hospital was struck by an Israeli double-tap strike on the facility. This is a tactic in which, following an attack such as an air strike or artillery shelling, a second strike is initiated several minutes later, targeting those rushing to the site.
The second missile was fired from a tank at the hospital minutes after the first strike, killing journalists, as well as rescue workers who had attempted to aid Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri.
The strikes killed at least 21 people, including 4 other journalists who worked for the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, or were freelance. The Israeli military released a statement saying that the strikes on Nasser hospital targeted a “Hamas camera,” without providing evidence.
Israel has widely been condemned for the deaths of journalists since the start of the Israeli-Gaza war. Over the past 23 months, at least 274 journalists and media workers have been killed by attacks in Gaza, making it the deadliest conflict in history ever recorded for journalists.
Last year, the Israeli military raided and took over Nasser Hospital. After forces withdrew their troops from Khan Yunis in April of 2024, Palestinian Civil Defence Crews uncovered a mass grave inside the medical complex. A total of 283 bodies were recovered at Nasser Hospital, many of the bodies with their hands tied and without clothes were recovered. Many of the dead included elderly women, children, and young men.
The discovery was so shocking that it prompted the United Nations to call for an “independent, effective and transparent investigation” demanding answers from the Israeli government.
After becoming a nurse practitioner, Nasser’s path of service took her all over the world, from the Mexican border to treating refugees in Greece and tending to mass casualties in Lebanon.
Eventually, Nasser traveled to Gaza. She had planned to travel to the region for a medical mission with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund in May 2024, but the mission was canceled hours before departure due to the invasion affecting Rafah, resulting in a two-week siege of the hospital.
Upon arriving in mid-August, Nasser says she was struck by the profound devastation — and by the climate.
“The landscape itself speaks of immense loss as entire neighborhoods have been leveled, and with a searing heat wave, it makes the rubble streets feel like an impossible furnace,” she said.
Last month, the region experienced a brutal heat wave, with record-breaking nighttime minimum temperatures of 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Nasser also said that, beyond the visible destruction, the material conditions and lack of basic materials in Gaza are a constant struggle.
“The air is heavy, and there is a constant exhausting search for basic necessities by the people. The scarcity of clean water with the heat, the omnipresent threat of disease, and Israeli bombing, creates a suffocating, grinding reality,” she said.
Nasser said that she struggles with survivor’s guilt; she was off-site doing training when the Aug. 20 attack on Nasser Hospital took place.
“Hearing about her being one of the victims and then succumbing to her death was devastating and makes you question everything,” Nasser said.
The sight of the hospital balcony, once a peaceful place for coffee breaks and discussions with colleagues, is now a source of profound sorrow. Bloodstains remain on the steps outside a bombed-out operating room.
“My colleagues have shared countless photos depicting the horrifying extent of the casualties, with many victims injured or killed beyond recognition”, Nasser said. “This day will stay with me the rest of my life, and I will truly miss my friend Mariam.”
From the perspective of a practitioner, Nasser said that the situation in Gaza is “nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Nasser said that the disparity between the medical resources and the number of daily casualties is the most significant challenge, with Nasser Hospital working at 200% capacity.
Hospital staff are also faced with a severe shortage of basic medical supplies such as surgical instruments, sutures, and blood products.
And critical medications, especially those for pain management and antibiotics, are increasingly scarce. “The injuries I see are unlike anything I have encountered in my career,” Nasser said, describing injuries of severe trauma, burns, and shrapnel wounds.
“What’s even more heartbreaking is the sheer number of women and children among the casualties. The medical teams are operating under conditions that defy belief, with chronic shortages of everything from basic sanitation supplies to pain medication.”
As conditions in Gaza become more and more dire with every passing day, Nasser said practitioners are facing unfathomable odds. “I’m suturing patients with no pain control. The medical staff, both local and international, are working under relentless pressure, often for days without rest.
“I hear bombs in the background and feel the building shake at times … It’s an environment of constant triage, where we are forced to make impossible decisions about who can be saved and who cannot.”
Nasser said that she believes that medical professionals must come together to condemn the attacks on medical personnel and facilities.
“The scale of the killing and destruction here [in Gaza] demands the world’s urgent attention and support,” Nasser said. “This is not just a medical crisis; it’s a moral one. The international community has a responsibility to uphold human dignity and to protect innocent lives.
“Providing support for Gaza is not a political act, but a fundamental humanitarian imperative to alleviate suffering and to prevent further loss of life.”
