Gaza Herald _For patients in Gaza suffering from diabetic foot complications and vascular disease, wounds cannot wait. Yet amid displacement, destroyed healthcare services, scarce medical supplies, and the crushing cost of transportation, reaching treatment has become another daily struggle.
Seventy-year-old Zainab Ahmed Shalabi sat in a wheelchair inside the Vascular and Diabetic Foot Center at Kuwait Specialized Field Hospital while her son, Khaled, waited for doctors to finish dressing a deep wound on her heel.
The family fears that the wound could deteriorate into gangrene and ultimately lead to amputation.
Zainab lives with diabetes and high blood pressure and has previously suffered both a heart attack and a stroke. Her diabetic foot condition has made movement and access to medical care even more difficult, particularly because she lives in the Fash Farsh area, far from the center.
Khaled said the wound initially appeared as a small mark before gradually growing worse. His mother needs the wound dressed every day or every other day, but the distance and lack of reliable transportation make regular visits nearly impossible.
He sometimes takes her to a nearby clinic for dressing changes before bringing her to the vascular center or Nasser Hospital once a week.
Transporting a woman who is wheelchair-bound and paralyzed is especially difficult under Gaza’s current conditions. While doctors are doing everything they can to save her leg, Khaled lives with the constant fear that the wound will worsen and reach the point of gangrene or amputation.
Fifty-seven-year-old Hanem Ahmed al-Najjar faces a similar struggle.
She underwent surgery for varicose veins about seven years ago, but the condition later returned more severely. Her legs became swollen, and she also suffered a blood clot, making even long-distance walking extremely difficult.
Hanem said reaching the center takes around two hours and requires three different forms of transportation from the place where she is displaced in the far south of al-Mawasi, Khan Younis.
Specialized vascular services are largely unavailable in the area where she lives. Other health facilities referred her to Kuwait Specialized Hospital, which has become a vital destination for patients as Gaza’s specialized healthcare services remain severely limited.
Hanem receives antibiotics, painkillers, blood-thinning medication, and other treatment related to her condition, along with the necessary examinations and follow-up care.
Her description of life in Gaza is painfully simple: “This is our life.”
Disease Worsens Inside Displacement Tents
Dr. Mohammed Khaled al-Shaer, a vascular surgeon, said the Specialized Center for Vascular Surgery, Diabetic Foot Care, and Advanced Wound Dressing at Kuwait Specialized Hospital began operating in February to provide free specialized treatment for patients with vascular conditions and diabetic foot complications.
The center treats patients with varicose veins and poor blood circulation, kidney patients requiring dialysis access, and people suffering from diabetic foot wounds.
These patients require continuous medical monitoring and frequent wound dressings, sometimes once or twice a day.
Such treatment can place a heavy financial burden on families, particularly during Gaza’s devastating economic and humanitarian crisis. At the same time, the collapse of much of the healthcare system during the war has overwhelmed hospitals and reduced their ability to provide the sustained care that diabetic foot patients require.
The center has provided a specialized space for these patients, allowing medical teams to perform advanced wound dressings and minor procedures under local anesthesia. This has reduced some of the burden on patients and their families, who would otherwise have to move repeatedly between overcrowded hospitals.
But the greatest danger often begins after patients leave the center.
People with diabetic foot wounds need clean and safe surroundings—conditions that are extremely difficult to maintain while living in displacement tents.
“The presence of tents, hot weather, and the lack of clean homes have clearly increased cases of diabetic foot,” al-Shaer said.
Patients living in tents are constantly exposed to sand and dust, leaving even small wounds vulnerable to contamination and infection.
Transportation creates another serious obstacle.
Patients who cannot find transportation may have no choice but to walk long distances to reach medical care. Repeated walking places additional pressure on an injured foot, worsening wounds and delaying healing.
A Small Wound Can Become Life-Threatening
Al-Shaer said the center receives everything from minor wounds to advanced cases involving severe infections and sepsis that require urgent intervention.
The center coordinates with Nasser Hospital to manage critical cases. Emergency cleaning and procedures are performed when necessary before patients are transferred to Nasser for continued treatment, hospitalization, and intravenous antibiotics, as Kuwait Specialized Hospital does not have enough space to accommodate patients overnight.
The number of vascular and diabetic foot cases has increased during the war, driven not only by deteriorating living conditions but also by shortages of essential medicines.
Al-Shaer said shortages of certain medications, particularly blood thinners and drugs used to control cholesterol and blood fats, have contributed to a rise in cases involving poor blood circulation in the legs.
Patients with varicose veins have also faced major challenges. Many non-emergency procedures were postponed or suspended during the war as hospitals struggled to cope with the overwhelming number of casualties and urgent cases.
The center has since begun providing some examinations, procedures, wound care, and compression therapy, including treatment for venous ulcers caused by complications from varicose veins.
Medical Supplies and Transportation Remain Major Obstacles
Although the center can provide many of the services patients need, shortages of essential supplies remain a persistent problem, particularly gauze and compression bandages.
The shortage becomes even more difficult when medical teams try to support patients who live far from the center by providing enough supplies for them to receive dressing changes at a nearby medical point.
There are not always enough additional supplies available to do so.
Some patients also leave the center without receiving appropriate follow-up wound care. Even when doctors provide written instructions to nearby health facilities, the required treatment may not always be available.
That can cause wounds to deteriorate, forcing patients to return to the center in significantly worse condition.
Al-Shaer recalled cases in which treatment successfully healed wounds completely. He also described patients who returned after long absences with severe infections.
In many cases, he said, the absence was not because patients had neglected their treatment. They simply could not afford transportation or lived too far from the center.
Diabetic foot disease is not an illness that heals quickly. It requires prolonged treatment, regular wound care, medication, and close monitoring.
That makes transportation, medical supplies, and financial support not secondary concerns but essential components of treatment.
Gaza’s Patients Face a Daily Fight to Keep Their Limbs
From a small wound on an elderly woman’s heel to swollen legs weakened by disease and displacement, the suffering of Gaza’s vascular and diabetic foot patients extends far beyond the medical diagnosis.
They are fighting disease while also confronting displacement, poverty, destroyed healthcare infrastructure, inadequate living conditions, shortages of medicine and supplies, and the enormous cost of simply reaching a doctor.
In Gaza, a wound that might ordinarily receive timely treatment can become a threat to a person’s limb or their life.
For patients like Zainab and Hanem, treatment is not simply a matter of finding a hospital. It is a daily struggle to reach care, protect an injured body, and hold on to the hope that a preventable wound will not become another permanent loss caused by Gaza’s devastating humanitarian crisis.
