Al-Shifa Hospital

Al-Shifa Hospital
Geography
Location	Gaza, Gaza Governorate, Palestinian territories
Organisation
Care system	Internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, ophthalmology, obstetrics, gynecology
Hospital type	Treatment
History
Founded	1920s

Al-Shifa Hospital (Arabic: مستشفى الشفاء‎ Mustashfa al-Shifa), properly known as Dar Al-Shifa Hospital (Arabic: مستشفى دار الشفاء‎ Mustashfat dar al-Shifa) is the largest medical complex and central hospital in the Gaza Strip, located in the neighbourhood of North Rimal in Gaza City in the Gaza Governorate. The current director of the hospital is Dr. Medhat Abbas.

Dar Al-Shifa, which means "house of healing" in Arabic, was originally a British Army barracks, but was transformed into a center to provide treatment for quarantine and febrile diseases by the government of the British Mandate of Palestine. Prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, al-Shifa was the only hospital in Gaza. When the Egyptians administered the Gaza Strip after the war, the quarantine and febrile diseases department was relocated to another area in the city and al-Shifa developed into the central hospital of Gaza. Initially, a department for internal medicine was established, followed by a new wing for surgery, and subsequently new buildings for pediatrics and ophthalmology were added to the hospital. In 2013, a special surgical building was opened.

After a brief occupation by Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis, the returning Egyptian administration, under directives by president Gamal Abdel Nasser, paid more attention to the health and social situation of Gaza, and al-Shifa was expanded to include departments for obstetrics and gynecology. They established a new health administration for the Gaza region, later building several clinics throughout the city that were attended by doctors from the hospital. The largest department in al-Shifa was internal medicine (100 beds), then pediatrics (70 beds), surgery (50 beds), ophthalmology (20 beds) and gynecology (10 beds).

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