Al Jazeera Net correspondents
Gaza- The lives of 70 cancer patients inside the Turkish Friendship Hospital for cancer patients in the Gaza Strip are seriously threatened, according to a statement by Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila.
The hospital was subjected to direct bombardment last week, which threatened the lives of patients undergoing treatment there even before the aggression, and they were in a difficult health condition. It lacks the necessary medicines for cancer patients, due to the prevention of their entry into the Gaza Strip.
The number of cancer patients in Gaza is about 2,000, living in catastrophic health conditions as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Strip and the displacement of a large number of residents, according to the same source.
Reem Asraf (40 years old) from the city of Khan Yunis, who is the daughter of Gaza City, says, “I am suffering from a very dangerous situation, as the delivery of my treatment for thyroid cancer has stopped, due to the closure of the Beit Hanoun crossing, which connects the occupied West Bank and the northern Gaza Strip, which has further deteriorated my health and physical condition.” “.
Bad situations
She added, “I was supposed to go to Al-Makassed Hospital in occupied Jerusalem on October 8 to complete chemotherapy, after performing two surgeries and removing the tumor from my neck, but the circumstances of the war on Gaza and the cessation of medical referrals prevented me from leaving and recovering.”
Asref continues, “We are living in very bad conditions. I cannot move or even stand, due to the deterioration of my health and the lack of painkillers necessary for my condition.”
She confirms that her treatment is private, and is not available in pharmacies that have barely closed their doors in light of the harsh conditions that Gaza is experiencing, with no prospect of a solution being available soon and an end to the war targeting everyone.
Reem Asraf concludes, “In front of the scene of death and destruction, words cannot describe our feelings as cancer patients who suffered from it throughout our treatment and our transfer between hospitals.”
As for the patient, Saida Barbakh (62 years old), from the town of Bani Suhaila, east of the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, who suffers from bone cancer, she was displaced with her family to one of the shelters in the schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the center of the city of Khan Yunis.
Barbakh removed part of the nerve and implanted it in the tumor’s location a few days before the war in internal hospitals. She returned to the Gaza Strip to see a doctor after two weeks.
The patient says, “I did not expect things to reach this stage of danger and lack of stability and security. We left our homes and everything we owned and came to the shelter center to preserve the lives of our children and their children.”
She explained that her house was severely damaged as a result of the bombing of its surroundings, which became like a ghost town, and that she was deprived of receiving treatment at the Turkish Friendship Hospital after it completely stopped working, due to its exposure to bombing in the past days.
Bombing and medicine shortage
Saida is among the patients who were evacuated from the hospital to the south, due to bombing and lack of medicine. She continues, “I returned to the Gaza Strip two days before the war after undergoing a very dangerous operation, but the shelter centers do not provide them with the necessary food, drink, or bedding in light of the intensification of the aggression and the interruption of electricity and water since the moment the war broke out.”
She confirms that she “needs care and sleep, and I cannot move much in this wheelchair. I am experiencing the most difficult moments of my life in this hideous and painful war.”
Salem Khreis (40 years old), a leukemia patient, says: “There is no treatment in the hospital at all. We are in pain every day and no one feels us. The doctors do not leave us and are always next to us, but they do nothing, because there are no medicines. They reassure us and their looks are sad for us, and they are sympathetic.” “With us because of the severity of the pain.”
He added, “I cannot describe the pain we are experiencing. Can we die from the siege? It is not enough for them that we suffer from malignant cancer. They saved us from this injustice.”
The Turkish Friendship Hospital was opened about two years ago with Turkish support (Anatolia)
Emergency departure
The director of the Turkish Friendship Hospital, Sobhi Sakik, says, “Cancer patients were forced to leave the hospital, and their lives are at risk because they did not receive treatment or health follow-up, after 40 days of war.”
He explains that the medicines they had had ran out and very little remained, and that some patients moved to Dar Al Salam Hospital in Khan Yunis, “and they say it is safe, but there is no safe place in Gaza at all. They have no medicines, and we only provide them with care.” Clinical.
Skaik adds that specialized treatments for cancer patients, such as chemotherapy, cannot be provided now. “Every day we lose two or three of them, and there are many in the shelters without treatment and they die, and patients in the hospital ask to go out to the shelters to die there, because the hospital does not provide them with treatment.”
The hospital director says, “One night we transferred patients from the Turkish Friendship Hospital to the Central area near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. 4 of them died, and the previous night 6 others died.”
The director of the Turkish Friendship Hospital added that he handed the Ministry of Health a thousand treatment referrals abroad for cancer patients before the war due to the lack of treatment in Gaza. He confirmed that some of them died where they are now, or the cancer spread in their body because they did not receive treatment, because the body’s resistance to cancer is very weak.
He explained that if a person at a young age is afflicted with leukemia, “he will inevitably die,” and the patient must receive appropriate healthy food in addition to treatment, “both of which are not available during these circumstances. We do not have statistics on the number of cancer patients who have died because we are in a war.”
Cancer patients stranded in the Gaza Strip live in extremely dangerous conditions in the absence of treatment. There is no option but to move to hospitals in the West Bank and the occupied Palestinian interior to receive appropriate treatment.
They also suffer from pain due to illness, the occupation’s continued killing and destruction, insecurity, the closure of crossings, and the deprivation of movement to receive the required treatment, in addition to the accumulation of the wounded in hospitals and their priority, which has prompted some hospitals to empty beds for the people who need them most.
2023-11-15 13:47:41
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