About 8,000 patients, three-quarters of whom are victims of Israel’s war on Gaza, are in need of transportation to receive proper care outside of Gaza Strip, points out today World Health Organisation expressing his disappointment that only a small number of patients could be transferred from the Palestinian enclave.

For the WHO, which has deployed teams on the ground to provide logistical and medical support, moving the patients out of Gaza would provide some relief to medical teams and hospitals struggling to continue operating in a war zone.

“We estimate that 8,000 Gazans need to be moved out of Gaza,” Rick Peppercorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, said during a news conference in Geneva via video conference from Jerusalem.

On the whole, about 6,000 are victims of war, multiple injuries, burns and amputations.

The 2,000 are patients who cannot get the care they need in Gaza, where the health system is on the verge of collapse.

Before the start of the war on October 7, 2023, 50 to 100 patients were transported daily from Gaza to East Jerusalem or the West Bank. Half of them were cancer patients.

From October 7 to February 20, only 2,293 patients were able to leave the Gaza Strip for medical treatment.

Rick Peppercorn emphasized that the World Health Organization, but also the authorities of Gaza, Israel and Egypt, as well as the managements of the hospitals, are involved in the slow-moving process envisaged for the transfer of patients. The WHO is asking for the simplification of the process, since Egypt, other countries in the Middle East and some European countries have offered to welcome patients and their companions.

“We would like to see, and we are pushing for, an organized and supported transport” to provide medical care, both for the benefit of patients and to relieve some of the enormous pressure on Gaza’s crumbling health services, he said. the representative.

Of the 36 hospitals in the Palestinian enclave of 2.4 million people, 23 are no longer operational and the rest are underperforming to varying degrees due to shortages and damage to their facilities from Israeli shelling and ground operations.