Gaza Herald_ In the heart of Gaza, where relentless bombardment and siege have already shattered the health system, leukemia patients are making desperate pleas to the international community. Their voices, carried through urgent videos and appeals, seek not only medical treatment but also recognition of their right to live, a right denied by Israel’s ongoing genocide. Medicines are blocked, hospitals are destroyed, and patients are barred from traveling abroad for care. For many, time is running out.
In a video released by the Gaza Ministry of Health, Dr. Saleh Al-Sheikh Eid, a hematology specialist, stood alongside patients to appeal for their evacuation. He warned that without immediate treatment abroad, complications would rapidly worsen, leaving patients at risk of death. “These patients are suffering severe complications. Their only hope is evacuation, and every day of delay pushes them closer to death,” he said.
Among those awaiting evacuation is Ahmed Issa, a young man who has battled leukemia for four months. Despite obtaining a referral for treatment abroad, Israel’s closure has left him stranded in Gaza, his life depending on an escape that never comes. Similarly, the father of patient Abdul Rahman Al-Najji explained that his son had secured a treatment referral a year ago but has been denied exit. Diagnosed three years earlier, Abdul Rahman once recovered, but the disease has returned “more aggressively,” and now, without treatment, his future hangs by a thread.
Escalating Suffering Under Siege
The crisis of Gaza’s leukemia patients reflects a broader collapse in healthcare. At the end of May, the Ministry of Health reported that 11,000 cancer patients across Gaza are deprived of treatment, while 64% of essential cancer medicines have completely run out. Since Israel’s military takeover of the Rafah crossing on May 7, 2024, coinciding with its ground invasion, evacuations of patients and wounded have been almost entirely blocked—save for a handful permitted under the World Health Organization.
The numbers paint a devastating picture: 25,000 patients and wounded urgently need treatment abroad, 17,000 of whom already completed all medical referral procedures but remain trapped, awaiting Israeli approval that never comes.
A Health System Systematically Targeted
Israel’s war has deliberately destroyed Gaza’s medical infrastructure. According to the Gaza Government Media Office, since October 7, 2023, Israel has bombed, destroyed, or disabled 38 hospitals, 96 primary healthcare centers, and 197 ambulances. Among the most devastating losses was the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital—the only cancer treatment center in Gaza, which went out of service at the end of 2023.
Services were temporarily moved to the European Gaza Hospital, itself forced to close on May 15, leaving Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis as the last facility attempting to provide chemotherapy. Yet severe shortages of medicines, electricity, and basic supplies have made treatment almost impossible. The result is a catastrophic collapse of healthcare, where cancer patients face death slowly and painfully, not from their disease alone, but from a blockade that denies them even the chance of survival.
A Global Failure of Conscience
International human rights groups and health institutions continue to warn of the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Yet the pleas of leukemia patients and their families remain unanswered. Israel’s siege, backed by US support, has turned medical treatment into an impossible dream.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s genocide has killed 66,005 Palestinians and wounded 168,162 more, most of them women and children. Famine, itself a weapon of war, has claimed the lives of at least 442 people, including 147 children. Against this backdrop, Gaza’s leukemia patients cry out not only for treatment, but for recognition of their humanity.
