Today, 14,000 Palestinians need further treatment abroad, but the Jewish state won't let them out.
“My girl is sick with a virus. At first, we waited for permission to leave. It didn't happen. Then her condition worsened, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. They say she needs a plasma transfusion, but it's not possible here. So now I just have to wait to see if my baby survives,” Sabrin al Khadari, mother of a little girl currently hospitalized in Gaza’s Shuhadaa al-Aqsa hospital, Salwa Jihad, shared with Sputnik.
“We submitted all the necessary documentation to exit through Rafah, but it remains closed, forcing us to stay here,” the mother said.
The child is at peril due to the issues at the checkpoint, the mom noted. “She [the child] risks becoming yet another victim of this blockade—a tragic victim of war,” the woman emphasized.
Israel closed off the Rafah checkpoint five months ago, subjecting the sick and wounded to being stuck without medical treatment, the head physician of the Shuhadaa al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza’s Iyad al-Jabri area told Sputnik.
Israel’s merciless year-long ground operations in Gaza have created a healthcare disaster in the enclave. Vital vaccines, even the ones for kids, have not been able to reach the region.
“Those months were enough for the collapse of the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip. There are no consumables or medicine,” he said.
The requests to evacuate patients are being rejected by Israel, even requests from international organizations are being rejected, the doctor noted.
“We need to open the checkpoint and get all the patients who are suffering from a lack of medical care out. They need to be given proper medical care,” he emphasized.
“I was at school when the missiles struck. I was wounded by shrapnel in my left leg. The hospital told me that my condition requires amputation due to a lack of treatment, but only treatment abroad can help me. The operation costs $45,000, and I am hopefully waiting for the border checkpoint to open so that I can get back on my feet,” Jamil Ziyad, a little boy trapped in the Gaza Strip, told Sputnik.
“I am urging everyone to help us open the checkpoint, to allow the injured to receive the medical care they desperately require,” the boy currently hospitalized in Gaza’s Shuhadaa al-Aqsa hospital said.