By Mahmoud Ajjour in Gaza & Romana Rubeo

At least 1,100 Palestinian kidney patients, including 38 children, are facing an interruption of life-saving treatment in Gaza.

Imagine this: you or a beloved family member suffers from kidney failure, but you are living in a tiny, impoverished region that is in a constant state of war. 

Worse, this region is under a hermetic military siege. Worse, still, the few dialysis machines available to you and over 1,000 patients with the same condition, are about to become obsolete. 

It is a nightmare scenario for anyone, anywhere. For Gaza, however, this is part of everyday life; a routine of sorts, that even those among us who are sympathetic to the plight and the struggle of Palestinians have learned to accept as something evil, but almost an inevitable reality. 

The Palestine Chronicle correspondent in Gaza was invited to a grim press conference on Wednesday, where the Ministry of Health in the besieged Strip declared that all dialysis services in the small enclave will cease to operate in a matter of days. 

The reason? There is an unprecedented shortage of medical supplies necessary for dialysis clinics to continue with their services.

In the press conference in Gaza City, Dr. Ashraf Abu Mahdi, director of the pharmaceutical department in the Health Ministry, said that “the difficult and dangerous situation” is a direct outcome of the “shortage of medicines and medical supplies, which continues to haunt (Gaza’s) health services.”

“At least 1,100 patients with kidney failure, including 38 children, will not receive life-saving treatment due to the lack of medicines,” according to Dr. Abu Mahdi. 

“Today, these patients live with great fear and anxiety about their inability to receive the dialysis service due to the lack of the needed medical consumables”.

This is not the first time that Gaza’s doctors have made such dire warnings, and ultimately desperate calls for help. Aside from the support of a few Arab and international NGOs, quite often, the tragic warnings fall on deaf ears. 

Simply put, the international community is unable, or, rather, unwilling to confront Israel with the needed seriousness that would end Tel Aviv’s blockade on Gaza.

This blockade has been in place since 2007, at a horrific cost of untold suffering and an ever-growing death toll. 

Israel is “banning the transport and shipment of medical supplies to the hospitals of the enclave, putting the lives of thousands of kidney patients at risk,” Dr. Abu Mahdi maintained. 

The respected Palestinian doctor went on to say that hospitals in Gaza almost ran out of “dialysis filters, cannulas, and blood transfusion tubes.”

Dr. Abu Mahdi called on human rights organizations to condemn Israel’s practices against Gaza patients.

The Israeli occupation “deprives the patients of treatment inside the Gaza Strip, prevents them from leaving for treatment outside Gaza, and refuses to provide them with medical and diagnostic equipment.”

(All Photos: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)