After almost five months of war, the Gazan health system is more exhausted than ever.
Some 8,000 patients, three-quarters of whom are victims of the war between Israel and Hamas, require medical evacuation from the Palestinian enclave to receive adequate care, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. , frustrated that only a small number have been able to leave the territory so far.
For the institution, which has teams present on the ground to provide logistical and health support, the transfer of these patients out of Gaza would partly relieve the medical teams and hospitals who are fighting to continue operating in an area of war.
“We estimate that 8,000 Gazans need to be diverted out of Gaza,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, told a press briefing in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.
Among them, around 6,000 are war victims who suffer from multiple traumas, burns and amputations, he said.
The other 2,000 are regular patients who can no longer receive the care they need in Gaza, where the health system is very diminished and fragile, he explained.
Only 13 hospitals left in working order
Before the war began on October 7, 50 to 100 patients per day were referred from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Half of them were being treated for cancer.
Between the start of the conflict and February 20, only 2,293 patients were able to leave for medical treatment, according to the WHO.
Doctor Rik Peeperkorn stressed that this very cumbersome process involves the UN organization but also the authorities of Gaza, Israel and Egypt, as well as hospital directors.
The WHO is therefore asking that this system be simplified, he specified, especially since Egypt, other countries in the Middle East and certain countries in Europe had offered to welcome patients and people who accompany them.
Also read: Israel-Hamas war: what is still blocking negotiations on a truce in Gaza?
“We would like to see, and we are pushing for, an organized and sustained medical evacuation,” explained the official, for patients but also to “alleviate some of the enormous stress that these crumbling health services in Gaza are experiencing.” .
Of 36 hospitals in the Palestinian territory, which has a population of 2.4 million, 23 are not functioning and the others are limited to varying degrees by shortages and damage suffered in bombings or ground operations.
“Appalling”
For the first time since the start of the war, WHO teams visited two hospitals in northern Gaza last weekend, including Al-Awda Pediatric Hospital, where the situation is "particularly appalling", deplored Monday on the X network the boss of the agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“The lack of food led to the death of 10 children,” he lambasted, deploring more broadly “serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies” and “destroyed hospital buildings”.
“Civilians, especially children, and health personnel need increased assistance immediately,” he insisted, repeating his call to begin a ceasefire and guarantee the delivery of aid. humanitarian.
Grim findings during @WHO visits to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern #Gaza: severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed.
The visits over the weekend were the first… pic.twitter.com/CxaCuau7iR
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 4, 2024
After the deadly October 7 attack, which left around 1,160 people dead in Israel, the IDF's retaliation left more than 30,600 people, mostly women and children, dead, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which runs by Hamas.
Figures that Le Parisien is not able to verify.