Sickness can be 'death sentence' in Gaza as war fuels disease

Beirut: In Gaza, falling ill can be a death sentence. Cancer patients are waiting to die, polio has returned, and many of the doctors and nurses who might have offered help are dead while the hospitals they worked at have been reduced to rubble.

Doctors and health professionals say that even if the Israel-Hamas war were to stop tomorrow, it will take years to rebuild the healthcare sector and people will continue to die because preventable diseases are not being treated on time.

"People are dying on a daily basis because they cannot get the basic treatment they need," said Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at rights group ActionAid Palestine.

Cancer patients "are waiting for their turn to die," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Last week, Israel and Hamas agreed on limited pauses in the fighting to allow children to be vaccinated against polio after a one-year-old baby boy was found to be partially paralysed from the disease, the first case in the crowded strip in 25 years.

But even as crowds gathered in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis for vaccinations on Sept. 5, bombs continued to fall in other areas with Gaza health officials saying an Israeli strike killed five people at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah.

"It will take long and so much effort in order to restore the level of care that we used to have in Gaza," said Mohammed Aghaalkurdi, medical programme lead at Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Every day he sees around 180 children with skin diseases that he "just cannot treat," he said.

"Due to vaccination campaign interruptions, lack of supplies, lack of hygiene items and infection prevention control material, it (healthcare) is just deteriorating."

The conflict was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, more than 40,800 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's offensive in the enclave, according to the Gaza health ministry, with around 92,000 wounded.

But beyond the death toll from the fighting and airstrikes, people are also succumbing to illnesses that could be cured in normal circumstances.

As with the re-emergence of polio, children will bear the brunt of these long-term consequences, health experts say.

"We are talking about disabilities, we are talking about intellectual disabilities, mental health issues," said Aghaalkurdi.

"Things that will stick to the child until they die."

Specialists killed

At least 490 healthcare workers have been killed since the conflict erupted, according to Gaza's health ministry. A Reuters investigation found that 55 highly qualified specialist doctors were among those killed.

With each specialist killed, Gaza has lost a source of knowledge and human connections, a devastating blow on top of the destruction of most of the Strip's hospitals.

Many people have become weak from a lack of food, as prices of basic commodities have more than quadrupled since the conflict began. When they become ill, they are also too frightened to journey to the few remaining hospitals, Jafari said.

Eighty-two percent of children aged between 6 and 23 months have limited access to quality food, according to a report by the Global Network Against Food Crises, and more than 90 per cent of children under 5-years-old suffer from infectious diseases.

Meanwhile, skin diseases are rampant because of a lack of cleaning supplies and hygiene products, Jafari said. In markets, a bottle of shampoo can cost around $50 .

Israel has severely restricted the flow of food and aid into Gaza, and humanitarian agencies have warned of the risk of famine.

Jafari expects a reckoning after the war ends.

"There is delayed suffering, delayed sadness, there are diseases that are being delayed," she said. "There is an entire journey of suffering that is being delayed until the end of the war," she said.

Cancer 'death sentence'

Manal Ragheb Fakhri al-Masri, 42, is one of those facing that health reckoning.

Displaced seven times with her nine children, she has a heart condition and a benign tumour in her stomach and was supposed to leave Gaza for treatment earlier this year.

But then her husband was killed and she could not bear to leave her children.

Now, having also suffered several strokes, she is bedridden, unable to leave her tent by the sea in Al-Mawasi, which Israel had declared a safe zone. She has not had any medicine in five months and has not even been able to shower for two weeks.

"My husband used to take care of me and get medicine and feed his children," she said in phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Now I do not know what do. We do not have the most basic things."

Her children try to help as much as they can and sometimes bring her seawater for her to wash with but the salty liquid offers no respite. Her children are also all suffering from red rashes but they have no creams to soothe their burning limbs.

Waseem Alzaanin, a general practictioner with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, said the lack of drugs, equipment and medical facilities is killing his cancer patients.

Gaza's only cancer centre was destroyed earlier this year, he said, and many of his stage-one cancer patients are now classified as stage-four.

"The most basic requirements are not present. We cannot do anything except give them painkillers and make them comfortable with what life they have left," he said.

"It is like a death sentence," he added. "Let us not kid ourselves. We have no medical system."