Hospital in Gaza forced to cancel dialysis due to fuel crisis

At least 350 of Gaza’s kidney failure patients are on the verge of death as the Strip’s biggest medical complex declared a halt to dialysis services because of depleting fuel, the Middle East Eye reported on July 1st.

On July 1st, the head of al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City declared that the dialysis ward would close entirely by noon, after fuel needed to run the hospital’s generators was used up. “This is happening for the first time since the beginning of the war on Gaza,” Dr Muhammad Abu Hassira, a specialist in nephrology and internal medicine at al-Shifa, said.

He added: “During the worst periods of the war, the dialysis unit was forced to suspend operations multiple times for several days due to Israeli raids on the hospital. Today, the hospital is still partially functioning, but we simply cannot run the dialysis machines because there is no fuel.” Abu Hassira said the dialysis ward had fully stopped earlier that day, with remaining fuel being left for the intensive care unit.

He said: “Kidney failure patients came today, and we painfully had to ask them to go back home. This has very serious repercussions on their health.”

UN agencies warned on June 19th that vital health services in Gaza are “hours away” from total shutdown unless fuel shortages are urgently addressed.

Olga Cherevko from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, “We are really – unless the situation changes – hours away from a catastrophic decline and a shutdown of more facilities if no fuel enters or more fuel isn’t retrieved immediately.”

OCHA said between May 15th and June 9th, Israeli authorities denied entry to northern Gaza 14 times, halting fuel retrieval, which led to the looting of around 260,000 litres vital for hospitals and lifesaving services.

Ahmed al-Sayed, 31, said of his grandmother’s dialysis sessions: “If she misses even one session, she feels suffocated and struggles to breathe. But if it goes beyond that… it won’t be long before she dies.”

Doctors at al-Shifa Hospital report that around 41% of kidney patients have died since the Gaza war began, yet dialysis units remain under pressure as kidney failure cases have increased due to limited access to healthy food and clean water during the conflict.

Middle East Eye, Maghrebi.org