The desperation of patients haunts Gaza’s hospitals – their exterior walls eaten away by gunfire and Israeli strikes, the health-care system inside them still unrepaired.
Eight months after the ceasefire deal instructed that “full aid” be sent into the Gaza Strip, aid workers say the continued lack of essential medicines and equipment has meant doctors are rationing or loaning each other essential life-saving drugs, or turning patients away from chemotherapy or dialysis appointments.
“The fact that the medical evacuation list is thousands long is a sign that people in Gaza don’t have access to what they should have – which Israel, as the occupying power under international humanitarian law, has an obligation to allow them access to,” said Pat Griffiths, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jerusalem.
Shortages, he said, run from basic consumables like gauze dressings and painkillers, all the way up to advanced medical equipment.
“There is no doubt in my mind that people in Gaza are dying because they can’t receive the care they need – and that there are preventable deaths happening because of the limits on what can be brought in, in terms of healthcare.”
Asked about the reports of critical shortages, Cogat said in a statement that 17,000 tons of medicines and medical aid had entered Gaza since the ceasefire, including wheelchairs, cancer medications, insulin pens, anaesthetics, X-ray machines, CT scanners, dialysis machines and medical consumables.
“Despite claims to the contrary,” it said, “Israel has approved every request for medicines submitted by international aid organisations.”
In response, one humanitarian official involved, speaking to me anonymously, said that Israeli authorities often used anecdotal examples to mask shortages of key medicines and equipment, and that aid supplies continued to be restricted.
“You don’t count medical aid in terms of trucks and pallets; that’s not a denominator we use,” said the WHO’s Reinhilde Van de Weerdt. “We talk about the needs patients have, and the needs that are met.”
“If medical supply is unrestricted, you don’t have these discussions about what is given versus what is needed,” she said. “We need certain buffer stock levels of medical supplies, [and] you can’t run a hospital hoping the generator doesn’t break down.”