Recap of developments in Gaza
- The sixth group of patients and wounded individuals are making preparations in Gaza to head to the Rafah crossing to seek treatment abroad.
- Israeli warplanes bombed several homes at dawn in the eastern neighbourhood of Khan Younis.
- Early this morning, seven ambulances and two buses carrying patients and wounded individuals departed from the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s field hospital in Khan Younis, in preparation for their transfer via the Israeli-controlled Karem Abu Salem crossing to Italy for treatment.
- Overnight, Israeli air raids and artillery shelling targeted areas east of Khan Younis and Gaza City.
- Last night, some Gaza residents welcomed their relatives returning to the Strip via the Rafah crossing. Video clips posted by Palestinian activists showed the returnees’ arrival at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Gaza health officials call for intervention as Israel keeps blocking entry of laboratory supplies
Gaza’s Health Ministry has sounded an alarm over Israel’s continued blocking of laboratory supplies from entering the enclave, which it says “is exacerbating the crisis in the operation of laboratories and blood banks, threatening their closure”.
“The shortage of essential laboratory testing materials has exceeded 84 percent, and the shortage of consumables and laboratory supplies has reached 71 percent,” the ministry said in a statement.
“A number of laboratory tests are threatened with complete cessation as the crisis worsens”, including coagulation factor tests and blood transfusion compatibility tests, the ministry said.
It urged international intervention so that patients in Gaza can receive adequate medical care.
British doctor describes ‘absolutely huge’ individual impact of Israel’s blockade on medicine in Gaza
Dr Graeme Groom, a British orthopaedic surgeon who has volunteered in hospitals across Gaza more than 40 times, says a problem with shortages of medicine in the war-torn enclave is that it sounds “almost benign”.
“We have colleagues who are in Gaza every month, and last night, a colleague sent an urgent request for an antifungal drug called amphotericin,” he told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar.
“She wanted this for an 18-year-old girl who had a very rare fungal infection, a mucormycosis, as a consequence of diabetes, multiple comorbidities, poorly treated because of the shortages. And her very last message was, “This is an emergency. The fungus is eating her face,” Groom said.
“So when we talk about the shortages and we talk about the lists that are zero stock, both of medicine and surgical equipment, it doesn’t sound quite as dramatic, but the individual impact is absolutely huge,” he concluded.
‘I am slowly dying’ as I await medical evacuation from Gaza
As I write these lines, I am receiving treatment at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for kidney disease. Actually, I don’t know whether what I am receiving can actually be termed “treatment” or if it is only an attempt to postpone the inevitable.
Due to acute shortages of medicine and equipment in Gaza, doctors here make decisions based more on what is accessible than what is medically necessary. I am one such case. The necessary medicine and some of the tests I need are not available in Gaza right now.
My doctor informed me today, after new tests, that my condition has worsened and I urgently need to be evacuated from Gaza. He will do a referral for me so I can be put on the list of the 22,000 Palestinians who are languishing in pain while waiting to leave so they can get urgently needed medical care abroad.
My body, like this hospital I am in, is functioning at the bare minimum.
Life was difficult before the war, but at least there existed a reliable healthcare system, albeit a shaky one. Whenever medicine and tests were unavailable in Gaza, I was able to go to the West Bank and get treatment there. In 2023, I went to a hospital in al-Khalil (Hebron), where the Palestinian Ministry of Health covered my treatment. I returned to Gaza only a few days before the war began.
