Published On 13/12/2025
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Last update: 09:30 (Mecca time)
The World Health Organization said that 1,092 patients in the Gaza Strip died while waiting for medical evacuation between July 2024 and last November 28, as a result of the stifling Israeli siege that has continued for more than two years in conjunction with the war of extermination launched by Tel Aviv on the Strip.
This came in a statement made by Rick Pepperkorn, the organization’s representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, to reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York yesterday, Friday, citing health authorities in the Gaza Strip.
Peppercorn suggested that this number was likely less than the real number of those who died because they were not evacuated from Gaza to receive treatment abroad, noting that these statistics depend only on reported deaths.
He stressed that the World Health Organization “called on more countries to receive patients from Gaza, and to return medical evacuations to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
According to Peppercorn, 18 out of 36 hospitals and 43% of primary health care centers in Gaza were partially functioning, and there was a severe shortage of essential medicines and medical supplies needed to treat heart disease, and other ailments.
He said that although approval rates for supplies to Gaza had improved, the process of getting medicines and medical equipment into Gaza remained unnecessarily slow and complicated.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders called on countries around the world to receive tens of thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip who are in dire need of medical evacuation, noting that hundreds died while waiting for that.
The World Health Organization estimates that more than 8,000 patients have been evacuated from Gaza since the Israeli war of genocide on the Strip on October 7, 2023, and says that more than 16,500 patients still require treatment outside the Strip.