Gaza healthcare close to collapse as fuel runs out
GENEVA: The World Health Organization on Tuesday pleaded for fuel to be allowed into Gaza to keep its remaining hospitals running, warning the Palestinian territory's health system was at "breaking point". "For over 100 days, no fuel has entered Gaza and attempts to retrieve stocks from evacuation zones have been denied," said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories. "Combined with critical supply shortages, this is pushing the health system closer to the brink of collapse."
Peeperkorn said only 17 of Gaza's 36 hospitals were currently minimally to partially functional. They have a total of around 1,500 beds — around 45 per cent fewer than before the conflict began. He said all hospitals and primary health centres in north Gaza were currently out of service.
In Rafah in southern Gaza, health services are provided through the Red Cross field hospital and two partially-functioning medical points. Speaking from Tel Aviv, he said the 17 partially functioning hospitals and seven field hospitals were barely running on a minimum amount of daily fuel and "will soon have none left". "Without fuel, all levels of care will cease, leading to more preventable deaths and suffering."
Hospitals were already switching between generators and batteries to power ventilators, dialysis machines and incubators, he said, and without fuel, ambulances cannot run and supplies cannot be delivered to hospitals. Furthermore, field hospitals are entirely reliant on generators, and without electricity, the cold chain for keeping vaccines would fail.
The health ministry in Gaza said on Monday that 5,194 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on the territory on March 18 following a truce. The overall death toll in Gaza since the war broke out on October 7, 2023 has reached 55,493 people, according to the health ministry. "People often ask when Gaza is going to be out of fuel; Gaza is already out of fuel," said WHO trauma surgeon and emergency officer Thanos Gargavanis, speaking from the Strip. "We are walking already the fine line that separates disaster from saving lives. The shrinking humanitarian space makes every health activity way more difficult than the previous day."
Meanwhile, Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces on Tuesday killed more than 50 aid seekers in the southern city of Khan Yunis, the latest deadly incident near an aid site in the Palestinian territory. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that at least 53 people were killed and some 200 wounded as thousands of Palestinians gathered to receive flour at a World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid centre in the morning. "Israeli drones fired at the citizens. Some minutes later, Israeli tanks fired several shells at the citizens, which led to a large number of martyrs and wounded," he said.
Workers raced to restore Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, one of the last remaining functioning health facilities in Gaza's north, an area particularly hard-hit by the war. They cleared piles of rubble out of the courtyard to make space for ambulances, breaking large chunks of concrete from a collapsed storey with sledgehammers.
"Every day we are being bombed from the north to the south. Al Ahli Hospital has been destroyed. Medical services are halted. As you can see, there's nothing to wrap around my hand, and there's no medication," he said, holding up his swollen hand while laying down on a makeshift bed in the hospital's backyard. "We are reactivating the emergency department as well as the physiotherapy. This is important," Alessandro Maracchi, head of the UN Development Program's Gaza's office, said. OCHA further reported that its humanitarian partners in Gaza "continue to warn of the risk of famine in Gaza, amid catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity". — AFP
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