UN: Gaza patients’ lives at risk due to medical shortages

The Ministry of Health in the besieged Gaza Strip is suffering from an acute shortage of medicines which is putting patients’ lives at risk, Qatar’s Al-Arab news site reported the UN OCHA saying.

“The increasing shortage of medicine and medical disposals is a result of the unresolved disputes between the authorities in Gaza and Ramallah,” the organisation added.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qidra, said:

The health situation in Gaza is deteriorating before the eyes of the international community.

He said that the patients in Gaza “pay the price of the international silence regarding the Palestinian Authority’s suspension of medical supplies and treatment referrals.”

The Spokesman added: “We warn of the consequences of the deteriorating situation mainly of the cancer patients,” noting that up to 90 per cent of their medicines and medical treatment has been paralysed.

Ignore the spin, the siege of Gaza endangers everyone, Israelis included, so end it now

The Palestinian Authority in occupied Ramallah has been accused of reducing and sometimes withdrawing supplies of medicines to the besieged Gaza Strip in an effort to force the ruling Hamas movement to cede power to it.  The PA denies the charges.

Gaza is already crippled under an 11-year Israeli siege which has left it cut off from the outside world, limited imports and stopped reconstruction of properties demolished in Israel’s laste brutal war against it in 2014.

Egypt has exacerbated the siege by closing its border crossing with Gaza.

WHO: Israel hinders 40% of Gaza patients’ access to health care abroad