88 Palestinians leave Gaza Strip for medical treatment in rare medical evacuation

Eighty-eight Palestinian patients in need of urgent health treatment were evacuated from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday via the Karam Abu Salem border crossing, in a type of operation which has become increasingly rare over recent months.

The Israeli military launched aggressive operations in northern Gaza a month ago, with constant fire in the Gaza and North governorates blocking the passage of aid and patients in urgent medical need through the border into Israel. 

The other main route out of Gaza, via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, has been closed since Israeli forces invaded and closed the crossing in May. Egypt has refused to resume operations until Israel withdraws from the Palestinian side of the crossing, leaving patients and injured persons in Gaza unable to evacuate for medical treatment for months. 

Speaking from the scene of the evacuation, World Health Organization representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, said to Mada Masr that some of the patients whose passage out of Gaza was facilitated on Wednesday morning by the agency and the Palestinian Red Crescent had suffered physical trauma, while others were suffering with chronic illnesses including many cancer cases. 

Eighty-two of them were bound with their travel companions for the United Arab Emirates, while the other six were headed to Romania.

Amal al-Fadel, a Palestinian cancer patient among those getting evacuated to the UAE told Mada Masr on Wednesday morning that after she was cured from thyroid cancer, the cancer recurred in another part of her body a few months ago. 

“All of Gaza is suffering from the lack of medicines, of nutrition, of everything,” Fadel said. “And don't forget that this lack of nutrition and vitamins is for specific reasons. I mean, we are in a siege and war situation, but cancer patients cannot be marginalized. They should be provided with everything.”

The patients are due to receive medical treatment abroad as Gaza’s healthcare system has nearly collapsed under the onslaught of Israel’s constant targeting of health staff and facilities, where thousands of displaced Palestinians seek refuge. 

Hospitals in northern Gaza in particular have been besieged, stormed and bombed, and some of their medical staff have been forcibly disappeared since the beginning of Israel’s aggression on the strip. Conditions at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north have been deteriorating for the past weeks as the Occupation besieged and stormed the facility. 

Medical sources told the Palestinian News and Information Agency Wafa on Wednesday that a number of patients at Kamal Adwan Hospital had died due to the lack of surgical capacity, adding that Israeli forces have arrested most of the hospital’s medical crew members, leaving only two doctors and a number of nurses. 

Directing the evacuation on Wednesday morning, Peeperkorn noted that it is critically important to have better medical evacuation operations out of Gaza, adding that since the closure of the Rafah border crossing, only 282 patients have been medically evacuated, plus the 88 evacuated on Wednesday. Just one month after the Rafah border was closed by Israel's invasion and occupation of the area, WHO said that the closure of the crossing had prevented the evacuation of 2,000 patients from Gaza.

“If we continue like this, we will be doing medical evacuations for the next decade,” he added. 

Doaa Ahmed, who was evacuating as a companion to her two children Sanad and Wateen Negm, said that she has been waiting for months to secure medical treatment for their sickle cell disease outside the strip. Israeli authorities rejected her application to go with them multiple times, she said, until she finally got permission to leave with them this time. 

“When we went to the hospital, it was already under great pressure, given the conditions we live in. They could not provide us with medical care, and it is out of their hands, sometimes there would also be no blood  for transfusion,” the mother added. 

In his comments on Wednesday morning, Peeperkorn reiterated WHO’s request for “regular, organized medical evacuations and proper medical corridors,” with the first being the traditional referral pathway to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the other medical corridor going to Egypt, as well as another to Jordan, allowing patients to evacuate to other countries willing to receive them. 

Nearly 26,000 patients and injured individuals are still in urgent need of medical care outside of Gaza. Humanitarian conditions in Gaza have deteriorated rapidly amid Israel’s invasion of the north, with aid deliveries all but absent.

The United States said on October 13 that it would give Israel 30 days during which it expected substantial improvements to the humanitarian situation, noting earlier this week that Israel so far would get a “fail” grade with little change to the situation. 

COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry unit tasked with overseeing civilian policy in the West Bank and Gaza, said earlier in the week that it had evacuated 72 patients from the Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in north Gaza  to hospitals in Israel. 

Also in coordination with WHO, six children diagnosed with cancer were evacuated on Wednesday from the Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, the spokesperson of the Palestinian Red Crescent told Wafa on Wednesday.

The children's medical evacuation is the first since March, the spokesperson said, noting that Israeli forces had targeted a Red Crescent convoy carrying patients from the Ahli and Shifa hospitals to southern Gaza in March, killing one of the paramedics. 

The child cancer patients were moved to Khan Younis due to the unavailability of medicine or adequate medical care for them in the northern areas of the Gaza strip.

A convoy of medicines was allowed into the Ahli hospital on Wednesday as well, the Red Crescent spokesperson added, and was delivered by the Red Crescent and the WHO.