The health care crisis in Gaza is unthinkably grim, even by the standards of war-ravaged regions. Infectious diseases from chickenpox to cholera are sweeping through the population; crucial medical supplies are blocked at the border; and hospitals are overrun with critically wounded patients.
Four months into Israel’s brutal war on Hamas, the situation looks set to get worse.
Israel is poised to launch an invasion into Rafah, endangering more than a million Palestinians who have sought refuge in the southern city, largely women and children. Hope for a humanitarian respite are fading as U.S.-brokered cease-fire talks broke down in Cairo this week. And the U.S. has frozen funding to the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza, further endangering the already tenuous efforts to provide medical aid.
“The most emerging thing is the health issue,” Mai al-Kaila, minister of health for the Palestinian Authority, told The Hill this week. “Because we have lots of injured people per day. We have thousands, and there is no place to be to be treated, or no safe place to be treated, as you know that the majority of hospitals are out of service.”
Al-Kaila is based in Ramallah in the West Bank, which the Palestinian Authority controls, while her deputy is based in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health estimates that more than 28,000 Gazans have been killed so far, 70 percent of whom were women and children, and an additional 8,000 are believed to be missing under the rubble, according to a report provided to The Hill.
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