Monica Johnston RN, Burn and wound care nurse from Portland Oregon with the PAMA Palestinian American Medical Association, monitors a patient who sustained major burns on May 8, 2024, Khan Younis, Gaza. AFP
The deaths underscore the devastating collapse of the strip’s health system, strangled by an unrelenting siege and the aftermath of a genocidal war that has left hospitals in ruins and doctors powerless.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva that around 16,500 people, including 4,000 children, remain in critical need of transfer to hospitals outside Gaza.
Many are cancer patients, trauma victims, or children suffering from preventable diseases. Ghebreyesus warned that each day of delay is “a death sentence for the most vulnerable,” as the strip remains sealed off despite a declared ceasefire.
The WHO took over coordinating medical evacuations in May 2024.
According to the WHO, 119 evacuation missions have been carried out since May 2024, providing some relief to more than 8,000 patients.
However, Gaza’s medical network continues to operate at less than half its capacity, crippled by shortages of medicine, electricity, and clean water, SAFA reported.
Health workers describe operating in impossible conditions, performing surgeries without anaesthetics, and witnessing patients die from treatable wounds.
Ghebreyesus called for the immediate opening of all crossings and unrestricted medical access, stressing that “the duty to save lives must come before political agendas.”
His remarks echo growing outrage from humanitarian groups, who warn that Gaza’s hospitals—once places of healing—have now become symbols of abandonment and suffering.
As of 24 September 2025, there have been a total of 825 attacks on healthcare in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 985 and injuring another 2,000.
Egypt has received hundreds of Palestinian patients and wounded since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza in October 2023, but Tel Aviv's continued closure of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing in violation of the 11 October ceasefire agreement has brought the medical evacuation process to a halt.
The Israeli genocidal war in Gaza has killed and wounded nearly 240,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, which amounts to more than 10 percent of the strip's population.
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