‘We just sit and cry’: Gaza’s cancer patients facing slow, painful deaths under Israeli siege
“The doctor has nothing left to do but sit and cry next to this patient who is denied treatment and denied travel.”
About 11,000 cancer patients in the besieged Gaza Strip are facing slow, painful deaths as the Israelis have destroyed the medical infrastructure of the enclave and continue to maintain a tight siege during the ongoing so-called “ceasefire.”
“I used to receive treatment in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Hani Naim, who has been suffering from cancer for six years, told Al Jazeera. “Today, I cannot access any treatment at all. I need radiotherapy, and it no longer exists in Gaza.”
Cancer-related deaths in the Gaza Strip have tripled since the start of the genocide in October 2023, according to doctors in the enclave. “With no chemotherapy, no radiotherapy, and no way out, a cancer diagnosis has become, for many, an immediate death sentence,” the Al Jazeera report adds.
Gaza’s only cancer hospital
The crisis facing cancer patients in Gaza has been exacerbated by the Israelis’ bombing of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital last March. Prior to its total destruction, Israel had been using the hospital as “a military base throughout the course of its occupation of the so-called ‘Netzarim Corridor,’” following the ground invasion in October 2023.
With trademark chutzpah, the Israelis justified their war crime. “We emphasize that the targeted building has not been used as an active hospital for over a year,” the occupation forces said at the time. The terrorist army failed to mention that the hospital was not active because it was being used as a military base by them.
Gaza’s only cancer hospital now resembles a demolition site:
The state of Gaza’s main cancer facility has forced doctors into makeshift arrangements, but they are still hampered by a total lack of resources under Israel’s tight siege on what and who enters the enclave.
“We have lost everything,” Dr. Mohammed Abu Nada, the medical director of the Gaza Cancer Centre, told Al Jazeera Mubasher. “We lost the only hospital capable of diagnosing and treating cancer… We are now in Nasser Medical Complex, but unfortunately, we have no equipment to diagnose the disease, and we have no chemotherapy.”
Let them eat junk
Doctors in Gaza have repeatedly made urgent appeals to relevant authorities over rapidly depleting medicine stocks. Late last month, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza’s largest medical facility, Al-Shifa Hospital, reported that about 55 percent of medicines were unavailable in the Gaza Strip.
Days later, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that the shortages stood at 52 percent for medicines and 71 percent for medical supplies. The ministry said that the health system in the besieged enclave was facing “an unprecedented and dangerous state of exhaustion” after more than two years of non-stop Western-backed Israeli barbarism.
While the Israelis have been flooding the Gaza Strip with narcotics and junk food with no nutritional value, they have severely restricted the entry of essential medicines and proper food.
“They brought in chocolates, nuts, and chips … but treatments for chronic diseases, cancer treatments, and diagnostic devices have not entered at all,” Dr. Abu Nada said.
“This is just propaganda,” he added, dismissing Israeli claims of free flowing aid. “We appealed to the World Health Organization … to at least provide us with treatment if we are not allowed to leave. But on the contrary, what we had has run out.”
“Abu Nada estimated that 60 to 70 percent of cancer protocols are completely unavailable,” the report added. “Because chemotherapy often requires a specific sequence of drugs, missing even one component renders the entire treatment ineffective. Even palliative care is failing. Painkillers — essential for managing the agony of advanced cancer — are now being rationed.”
This leaves doctors in a nightmarish bind.
“We try to prioritise,” Dr. Abu Nada explained. “Those with widespread cancer are given some, and those who are still on safe ground … we do not give them any.”
Daily deaths
Dr. Abu Nada revealed that two to three cancer patients are dying daily in Khan Yunis alone. “The result is that cancer spreads in the patient’s body like wildfire,” he said. “We have gone back 50 years in cancer treatment.”
There are 3,250 patients with official referrals for treatment abroad waiting for evacuation. However, since the Israelis have not reopened the Rafah Crossing — which was meant to open as part of the “ceasefire” — and strictly limit medical evacuations, most patients remain stuck in Gaza with faint hopes of receiving medical care abroad.
“Some specialists have left Gaza,” Dr. Abu Nada said. “But even for those who remain, what use is a doctor without tools?”
“The doctor has nothing left to do but sit and cry next to this patient who is denied treatment and denied travel.”
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Absolutely heartbreaking, infuriating and desperately cruel in the same measure. And why is this deliberately planned cruelty not more widely known and publicised? Especially now when Doctors Without Borders and others have been banned ……Rhetorical question as we know the answer. Mainstream press in Australia certainly wouldn’t dare report it….even if they were remotely interested - especially at the moment following the Bondi attack as it would be seen as anti semitic to report the truth …… when you think it can’t get any worse for the beleaguered Palestinians it just does….
This is yet another horror emanating from the horrible government of a permissive and therefore collaborating horrible people. But that same streak of evil aggression founded on chosen -people hubris in Israel also runs through a good chunk of the American populace as well -- illustrated not only by the ICE thug who shot that poor Minnesota woman in the face, but even more so, by JD Vance and all the other idiots in US society seeking justifications for it as reasonable -- just as they justify genocide and starvation in Gaza.