Gaza strip – Sitting in her wheelchair, Saida Barbakh looks around the crowded classroom of a United Nations-run school in Khan Younis, where she now lives. She sighs deeply.
The 62-year-old bone cancer patient’s medications had run out several days earlier. She had been treated at Al Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem, and after a successful but complicated surgery, she returned to the Gaza Strip on October 5, two days before the start of the war.
“I had to come back after two weeks for a medical examination,” she says. “I didn’t expect things to reach this level of danger.”
UN-run schools, where 725,000 displaced Palestinians have sought refuge for more than a month from relentless Israeli bombardment, are far from ideal for housing sick patients. Lack of electricity, running water, food and bedding, as well as inadequate sanitation, are turning schools into petri dishes for an outbreak of diseases, mainly respiratory infections, diarrhea and skin rashes.
“I feel like I need care and sleep and I can’t move much in this wheelchair,” Barbakh said. “Living in this ugly, painful war against cancer is truly horrible. »
Barbakh, originally from the town of Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis, was initially recovering at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only one treating cancer in the Gaza Strip.
But the hospital was forced to close its services on November 1, after running out of fuel due to Israel’s continued blockade of the Gaza Strip. The building also suffered heavy damage from repeated Israeli attacks in surrounding areas, the Health Ministry said. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardments on Gaza since October 7.
Barbakh was among 70 cancer patients evacuated from hospital to the south, but after her home was damaged by Israeli bombing – turning much of the area into a ghost town – she and her family did not had no choice but to stay in a shelter. school.
Only clinical care available
Palestinian Authority Health Minister Mai al-Kaila warns that the lives of these 70 cancer patients are at serious risk due to the lack of treatment and medical monitoring.
Overall, the 2,000 cancer patients in the Gaza Strip live in “catastrophic health conditions due to the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Strip and mass displacement,” al-Kaila said.
Subhi Sukeyk, director of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, said that more than a month after the start of the war, medicines had run out.
“Specialized treatments for cancer patients, such as chemotherapy and multi-drug combination treatments, cannot be provided,” Sukeyk told Al Jazeera. “Some patients have been transferred to Dar Essalam Hospital in Khan Younis, which they say is safe, but there is no safe place in Gaza. »
Dar Essalam Hospital cannot offer medicines or cancer treatments, but it provides patients with basic clinical care, he said.
But some cancer patients have asked to join their families at the shelter’s schools to die among them, because they know hospitals cannot provide them with treatment, he added.
“Every day we lose two or three patients to cancer,” Sukeyk said. “The night the patients were transferred from the Turkish Friendship Hospital,” he says, “four of them died. The previous night, six patients died.
At the Turkish Friendship Hospital, only a few patients remain. Among them is Salem Khreis, a 40-year-old leukemia patient.
“There is no medicine or treatment,” he said. “I can’t explain how terrible the pain is.”
Khreis said he appreciates that doctors always stand by their patients, but beyond reassurance, there’s little else they can do.
“They stand by us and tell us they are with us, but their eyes are full of sadness and helplessness at how much we are suffering,” he said.
“Can we die from the siege? Is it not enough for Israel that we suffer from cancer? Save 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 need of urgent care in Gaza to Turkey. No further details were offered.
No medical credentials or approved licenses
Health facilities in the Gaza Strip have been strained under the Israeli blockade for 16 years. Before October 7, Sukeyk said, he had handed over about 1,000 medical referrals from cancer patients to the Health Ministry each year for their proper treatment and care at more specialized hospitals outside the besieged territory.
Patients and their relatives must submit an application for a medical permit, which can only be approved by the Israel Coordination and Liaison Administration. In total, around 20,000 patients a year applied to Israel for permits to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment before the war, nearly a third of whom were children.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Israel approved approximately 63% of these medical exit requests in 2022.
This all came to an abrupt halt. Hospitals, overcrowded due to the large number of Palestinians injured in Israeli attacks, began releasing cancer patients to make room for the wounded.
Sukeyk said some of the cancer patients waiting for their medical permits have died, but he is unable to confirm the exact number due to the chaos of war.
“If a patient has not received treatment, the spread of cancer in his body is inevitable and he will die,” he said.
Reem Asraf, who suffers from thyroid cancer, is also running out of medication. She was supposed to be treated at Al Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, but the Beit Hanoon crossing, known as Erez to Israelis, in the north, has not been functional since October 7.
Asraf has undergone two surgeries, including one to remove the tumor from her neck, but she needs further care and checks.
“I cannot move or even stand due to my deteriorating health and the lack of painkillers needed for my condition,” she said, speaking from Khan Younis after being moved from her home in Gaza City.
“Faced with scenes of death and destruction, words are not enough to describe what we, cancer patients, suffer. »