No medication or care needed: Cancer patients in Gaza are at risk of death in Israel's war.
2,000 cancer patients in Gaza live in devastating health conditions without adequate treatment and care.
GAZA STRIP - Saida Barbak sits in a wheelchair at the United Nations-run school in Khan Younis, where she now lives, looking around the crowded classrooms. She took a deep breath.
The 62-year-old bone cancer patient's medication ran out a few days ago. She was treated at al-Maqassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem, and on October 5, two days before the start of the war, a complicated but successful operation was performed and she returned to the Gaza Strip.
"I was scheduled to come back in two weeks for a checkup," she says. "We didn't expect the danger to be this great."
The United Nations-run school, where 725,000 displaced Palestinians have sought shelter from relentless Israeli shelling for more than a month, is far from ideal for housing sick patients. A lack of electricity, clean running water, food and bedding, and inadequate sanitation means schools are using Petri dishes to guard against outbreaks of disease, particularly respiratory infections, diarrhea, and skin rashes.
"I feel like he needs care and sleep, but he can't move much in this wheelchair," Barbak said. “Living with this ugly and painful battle with cancer is truly terrifying.”
Barbak, from the town of Bani Suhaira, east of Khan Yunis, initially recovered at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only hospital in the Gaza Strip for cancer treatment. However, the hospital had to suspend services on November 1st due to fuel shortages due to Israel's continued blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Health Ministry said the building also suffered severe damage from repeated Israeli attacks on the surrounding area. Since October 7, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip.
Barbak was one of 70 cancer patients evacuated from a hospital to the south, but after Israeli bombing damaged her home and turned much of the area into a ghost town, she and her family died. The family had no choice but to stay in an emergency shelter. at school.
A total of 2,000 cancer patients live in the Gaza Strip in "catastrophic health conditions as a result of Israel's continued invasion of the Strip and mass displacement," al-Qaira said. Director of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, Subi Sukhek, said they had run out of medicines more than a month after the war began.
"We cannot provide specialized treatments for cancer patients, such as chemotherapy or multi-drug combination treatments," Skeyek told Al Jazeera. “Some patients have been taken to Dar es Salaam Hospital in Khan Yunis and are said to be safe, but there is no safe place in Gaza at all.”
He said Dar es Salaam Hospital cannot provide medicine or cancer treatment, but provides basic clinical care to patients.
However, he added that some cancer patients preferred to die with their families at evacuation schools because they knew they could not receive treatment in hospitals.
"We lose two or three cancer patients every day," Skake said. "The night the patients were transferred from Turkish Friendship Hospital, four of them died. The previous night, six patients died," he said.
Only a few patients remain at the Turkish Friendship Hospital. Among them is Salem Kreis, a 40-year-old leukemia patient.
“There is no medicine, no treatment,” he said. "I can't explain how bad the pain is."
Kreis appreciates that doctors are always there for patients, but he said he can't do anything else beyond the doctor's guarantee. “They say they support us and are with us, but their eyes are filled with sadness and helplessness as they see how much we are suffering,” he said. .
"Will we die in a siege? Isn't it enough for Israel that we suffer from cancer? Deliver us from this injustice."
Last week, Turkey's health minister said his country and Egypt had agreed to send 1,000 cancer patients and other injured civilians in Gaza who needed emergency treatment to Turkey for treatment. No further details were disclosed.
No medical prescriptions or licenses were approved.
health facilities in the Gaza Strip have been under Israeli blockade for 16 years. Sukeyk said that before Oct. 7, he made about 1,000 medical referrals of cancer patients to the Health Ministry each year to ensure they received appropriate care and treatment in more specialized hospitals outside the besieged area.
,patients and their relatives must apply for medical authorization, which can only be approved by the Israel Coordination and Liaison Administration. In total, before the war, about 20,000 patients per year applied to Israel for permission to leave Gaza for treatment, and almost a third were children.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Israel approved about 63% of medical leave requests in 2022.
That everything has stopped. Hospitals, overwhelmed by the large number of Palestinians injured in Israeli attacks, began discharging cancer patients to make room for the wounded.
Sukeyk said some cancer patients awaiting medical clearance had died, but he could not confirm the exact number because of the chaos of the war.
“If a patient is not treated, the spread of cancer in his body is inevitable and the patient will die,” he said.
Reem Asraf, a thyroid cancer patient, was also off his medication. She was supposed to be treated at Al-Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, but the Beit Hanoon border crossing in the north, called Erez by Israelis, has been closed since October.
Asraf has undergone two operations, including one to remove a tumor in her neck, but requires further treatment and examinations.
“I cannot move or stand due to my deteriorating health and lack of necessary painkillers,” Younis told Khan after she was forced out of her home in Gaza City.
“Facing the scenes of death and destruction, words cannot describe what we cancer patients are suffering.»
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