The Palestinian Center For Human Rights: Trapped without Treatment: Silent Death Awaits Thousands of Patients and Wounded Amid Weak Emergency Evacuations for Treatment Abroad
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) sends an urgent appeal to protect and save the lives of thousands of patients and wounded in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing catastrophic conditions in the remaining hospitals and healthcare centers, as well as the weak and slow mechanisms for their evacuation for treatment abroad. PCHR emphasizes that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has deliberately imposed disastrous and inhuman conditions aimed at intentionally and mercilessly sentencing Gaza’s patients and injured to death.
IOF has systematically destroyed Gaza’s main hospitals, killed and abused medical personnel, and intentionally left the remaining hospitals without specialized staff, medicine, medical supplies, and equipment. Additionally, IOF premeditatedly continues to prevent and obstruct the travel of thousands of patients for treatment abroad, persisting in their genocide ongoing for more than 16 months.
PCHR also condemns the exploitation of patients’ treatment as a bargaining chip as part of the Israeli collective punishment policy, which violates international humanitarian law and constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). PCHR emphasizes that these violations cannot be separated from the crime of genocide committed by Israel against the Gaza Strip population.
Depriving patients and injured of medical treatment by the IOF, undermining their access to treatment within the Gaza Strip, and preventing them from receiving treatment abroad all point to one undeniable fact: Israel has sentenced them to a slow and painful death. Israel deliberately inflects both physical and psychological harm on them as it hinders their access to lifesaving services and deprives them of urgent and critical surgeries that are unavailable in Gaza’s hospitals.
Despite the ceasefire agreement in January 2025, Israel continues to rely on ineffective travel mechanisms, resulting in the death of dozens of patients due to long waits for travel after enduring a harsh and prolonged denial of appropriate treatment within Gaza’s already collapsed hospitals.
According to PCHR’s follow-up, only 50 patients and their companions are allowed to travel daily, while the Israeli authorities refuse the travel of a large number of patients. Additionally, the Israeli authorities manipulatively classify patients based on priority and the need for travel, allowing less critical cases to travel while preventing or delaying the travel of more critical patients.
This has resulted in the death of 5 to 10 patients daily, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH)1. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1,473 patients, including only 579 children, were allowed to travel from 01 February to 10 March 2025. Meanwhile, approximately 12,000 to 14,000 patients, including over 4,500 children, are still in dire need of treatment abroad.2
There is an growing need for real intervention to save the lives of thousands of patients at risk of death by expediting their evacuation without any obstacles. Nearly two weeks have passed since the closure of Gaza’s crossings and the tightening of the siege, during which Israel has prevented the entry of humanitarian aid, including essential medicines, medical supplies, fuel, equipment, and construction materials and machinery.
This has resulted in a real setback, diminishing any hope of reoperating some hospitals, even at minimal capacity. Ibrahim Abbas, Director of Radiology Department at the Palestinian MOH, told PCHR’s researcher, doctors’ capabilities in diagnosing and treating patients have become extremely limited, especially after the IOF had destroyed four MRI machines, four CT scanners, 16 stationary X-ray machines, 17 mobile X-ray devices, 20 ultrasound machines, and other imaging equipment used in operating rooms.
Moreover, the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip is facing a severe shortage in all medical and human resources. Currently, only 19 out of 35 hospitals are operating at minimum capacity, particularly after they had lost their ability to accommodate patients, with bed occupancy exceeding 439%, particularly in adult and pediatric intensive care units (ICU).
Also, there is a significant and clear impact on essential services provided to patients in dialysis, surgery, and emergency departments3. All Gaza’s hospitals are also enduring an acute shortage of medical personnel and essential medical supplies, including those needed for blood laboratories and ambulance services for transporting patients, amid the near-total suspension of transportation and the immense difficulty patients and the injured face in reaching hospitals and healthcare centers.
All of this has made the evacuation of critical medical cases an urgent necessity, as the current situation exacerbates the suffering of approximately 150,000 chronic patients, along with more than 10,000 cancer patients who need to continue their treatment, including 4,200 women and around 750 children suffering from cancer and other serious diseases. Meanwhile, around 200 new cancer cases are diagnosed monthly.
PCHR has documented the deaths of 436 cancer patients over the past year, while the number of deaths is believed to have risen significantly since then. Additionally, around 40% of kidney patients have died due to their inability to undergo dialysis or be transferred for treatment abroad. Many other patients have also died silently, with no statistics available in this regard.
PCHR issues this press release to raise its voice and urge everyone to take immediate action to cease the suffering of more than 14,000 patients and injured who are enduring a tragic reality while awaiting urgent and adequate medical treatment. This requires pressure on ” Israel,” which evades its obligations as an occupying power that controls Gaza’s border crossings and the fate of nearly two million Palestinians, who are left to die without hospitals or lifesaving healthcare services.
PCHR also stresses that time is a crucial factor in evacuating patients to save their lives. Therefore, it warns of the serious consequences of the current situation on the realization of the right to health for patients in Gaza, in accordance with the principles of international humanitarian law. In light of the above, PCHR:
- Calls on the international community, especially the member states of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, to awaken their humanitarian conscience and exert pressure on Israel through issuing an abiding resolution that ensures the urgent opening of safe corridors for urgent medical evacuation, enabling patients and the wounded to travel for treatment and save their lives without restrictions or conditions.
- Calls upon the Special Rapporteur on the right to health to condemn and criminalize Israel’s exploitation of patients’ evacuation file as a bargaining chip and its insistence on enforcing ineffective and slow travel mechanisms that lead to their deaths after a prolonged and painful wait for treatment.
- PCHR calls on the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to exert pressure on Israel to stop its policy of collective punishment against patients—a policy it has long practiced even before the aggression—by adopting unjust criteria that violate international humanitarian law, depriving thousands of patients of their right to travel for treatment and lifesaving services.
- PCHR reiterates its call to all international organizations, particularly the WHO, to spare no effort in alleviating the suffering of thousands of Palestinian patients and injured people, whether through the rehabilitation and development of the frail healthcare system in Gaza or ensuring the safe evacuation of patients to receive the necessary and urgent treatment.
- Statements made by Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, head of file of referrals for treatment abroad at the Ministry of Health, link: https://aja.ws/h6if2c ↩︎
- OCHA, Humanitarian Situation Update #271 | Gaza Strip, link: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-271-gaza-strip ↩︎
- UNICEF warns of severe consequences after halting humanitarian aid deliveries into the Gaza Strip, link: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/stoppage-humanitarian-aid-deliveries-gaza-strip-unicef-warns-severe-consequences ↩︎
