WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that the UN agency and its partners had "evacuated over 10,600 patients from Gaza with severe health conditions, including over 5,600 children" since the start of Israel's war more than two years ago.

But he warned that "many more patients remain in Gaza awaiting evacuation to receive appropriate healthcare".

Citing numbers from the health ministry in Gaza, Tedros said that 1,092 patients were known to have died while awaiting medical evacuation just between July 2024 and November 28, 2025.

"This figure is likely underreported," he warned, calling on "more countries to open doors to patients from Gaza, and for medical evacuation to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to be restored".

"Lives depend on it."

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva on Friday that some 18,500 patients were still in need of treatment outside Gaza, including more than 4,000 children.

A Doctors Without Borders official told AFP earlier this month that the WHO figures refer only to registered patients, and that the actual number of people in need of urgent evacuation was several times higher.

"Many of these people don't have time to wait," Jasarevic stressed.

Up to December 1, more than 30 countries had taken patients from Gaza, but only a handful, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, had accepted large numbers.

Israel has continued to violate the terms of the truce, brokered by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the US in October, carrying out tens of strikes that killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians in the strip, in what Amnesty described last week as the continuing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In tandem, Israeli occupation forces have maintained tight restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid and winter supplies to 2.3 million Palestinians battling the spectre of hunger and death from extreme cold conditions in the strip.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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