Patients in Gaza are facing another war on top of the Israeli war, as the young woman Afnan Haboub, a resident of the Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City, is forced to face death twice a week when her mother, Samira, is transferred to the dialysis department in Al-Shifa Hospital, on a round-trip under non-stop bombardment, and the number of Her suffering in the hospital, which is busy beyond its capacity to treat and rescue the wounded.

After public transportation offices stopped, and ambulances were no longer able to meet the needs of ordinary patients, Haboob drives one of her relatives’ car to the hospital, and explains how she and her mother spend the way reciting the Shahada, while the level of anxiety rises with every raid, explosion, and sound.

The suffering of Haboob, along with thousands of other patients in Gaza, worsened, after many medical services in general stopped, in hospitals, dispensaries and clinics, with the unprecedented preoccupation with treating the wounded from the Israeli bombing, a situation that prompted the Ministry of Health in Gaza to allow every staff member who holds a medical or nursing degree, By working and providing assistance even without having practiced the profession.

Until recently, the Ministry of Health in Gaza, with the support of Arab and international institutions, often provided vehicles to transport kidney patients to hospitals for dialysis, twice a week for each patient, but all of that has stopped now, forcing the patients’ families to look for other difficult alternatives. With the almost complete absence of public transportation.

Haboob told Asharq Al-Awsat: “We must go early and return before dark. It is a complex suffering, an arduous journey through a minefield. We say goodbye to the family every time as if we will never return. But we can't help it, because it's also not possible for us not to go. “Our mere arrival to Al-Shifa Hospital feels like a new life was written for us, and our return home is the beginning of another new life.”

But the suffering of kidney patients does not stop at reaching the hospital, as everyone here is busy transporting and treating the wounded, a situation that complicates access to a nurse and makes time extremely long. Haboub said: “We do not find them and we find it difficult to find them, and if we find them we are ashamed of them and the wounded.” Gaza's hospitals are suffering from occupancy exceeding 150 percent of their capacity, and a severe shortage of medical staff exhausted by the Israeli war.

Clinics turn into shelters

Pill is one of the thousands of patients who need treatment, and if she finds it with all these difficulties, the others do not find it.

In the first days of the war, displaced person Mervat Al-Hajj, a resident of Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, was receiving her diabetes and blood pressure medications from UNRWA teams who were arriving at the homes of the elderly with the aim of providing treatment to them, but later the clinics were closed and some of them were turned into shelters housing the displaced. She started searching for medicines everywhere, any open pharmacy, any pharmacist, any doctor, any neighbor.

After Al-Hajj (57 years old) was forced to flee from Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip to Nuseirat in the center of the Strip, she was forced to buy some alternative medicines, but the medicine is not always available, and its price is also not always available. Al-Hajj told Asharq Al-Awsat: “UNRWA does not always have medicines. Diabetes and blood pressure are always there (high readings), sometimes I take the medicine one day, and another day I don’t.”

While UNRWA says that its crews are suffering from difficult conditions and cannot provide all the needs of refugees in the Gaza Strip, especially those displaced to shelter schools, the Hamas government’s government media office accuses the UN organization of shirking its various responsibilities and closing the medical clinics it supervises. .

Painkillers instead of a doctor

Asharq Al-Awsat monitored many patients who resort to painkillers in cases that require a visit to the doctor, but in Gaza this has become a kind of luxury. Citizens said that amidst all this death, they no longer care about their ordinary diseases, such as infections, fever, influenza, and asthma, and they will not venture to go to crowded hospitals. But dialysis patients, cancer patients, and other seriously ill patients cannot wait.

The Ministry of Health announced that the Turkish Friendship Hospital, the only hospital for cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, was damaged after it was targeted by the Israeli army. Dr. Sobhi Skaik, General Director of the hospital, said on Facebook, “A state of panic struck cancer patients and medical staff as a result of the demolition of the only Turkish Friendship Hospital for cancer patients in the Gaza Strip and the infliction of severe damage to it, as a result of its surroundings being repeatedly targeted.”

He added: “The occupation not only increased the suffering and pain of cancer and deprived them of medicines and travel for treatment abroad, but it now endangered their lives by targeting the hospital’s surroundings.”

Before that, Israel bombed the Baptist Hospital in Gaza, leaving 500 dead. It also bombed the vicinity of other hospitals, demanding a complete evacuation.

Health Minister Mai Kayla said that hospitals cannot be evacuated, as they are full of sick and injured people, in addition to thousands of displaced people who found a safe haven in the hospital courtyards. In addition to treating thousands of wounded people, kidney diseases, and cancers, there are departments that cannot close their doors. Such as maternity and pediatric departments and intensive care rooms.

Necessary services

The Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Health in Gaza said that since the start of the war, hundreds of cases have been dealt with, some of which were incurable. Ashraf Al-Qudra, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the hospitals that are still able to operate are providing necessary and urgent services to patients despite dealing with thousands of wounded people daily, and despite the acute and severe shortage in the availability of medical supplies.

He added: “There are hundreds of patients at risk of death, including dialysis patients, newborn children, and those in care departments. We cannot stop and we cannot evacuate the hospitals.” The Gaza Strip's hospitals began monitoring epidemic cases in primary care centers, due to the lack of water and healthy food and the destruction of the health and medical infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.