Covid denies Gaza cancer patients essential care
GAZA CITY: For Tahani al Rifi, a 34-year-old Palestinian thyroid cancer patient, her twice-monthly trips out of Gaza for iodine radiotherapy had offered hope that she could beat the illness.
But restrictions imposed during the pandemic have made travelling for treatment to a hospital in the West Bank impossible for her, leaving Rifi with few options as her health has worsened.
“My blood tests show that my condition has deteriorated,” she said, wearing a floral scarf while speaking through a pink protective mask.
“I’m living on sedatives, because of the pain in my feet and neck.”
Gaza had a weak healthcare system before the coronavirus pandemic, due partly to an Israelienforced blockade.
Israel tightly controls the flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza, measures it says are necessary to contain Hamas and other armed groups in the strip.
Because radiotherapy is unavailable in Gaza, Rifi had been travelling to Hebron in the occupied West Bank for treatment, a journey that requires transit through Israel.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic was declared last year, crossings into Israel have been restricted further.
For Gaza cancer patients, the Jewish state has allowed gravely ill people to be transferred to the West Bank or east Jerusalem, the majority Palestinian part of the city it annexed following the 1967 Six-day War.
Rifi said her case was not considered acute enough to qualify for an emergency transfer.
Her last radiotherapy session was in August, and she has felt too weak to exercise at the sports club near home in east of Gaza City, she added.
ACCESS TO CARE Gaza, which has a population of roughly 2 million, has recorded more than 51,500 coronavirus cases, including more than 520 deaths, according to Hamas’s health ministry.
Poverty rates, which stood at nearly 50 per cent before the pandemic, have increased — in part due to economic hardships exacerbated by the lockdowns that Hamas has imposed to stem transmission. Imane Shanane, who runs a patient advocacy organisation in Gaza, said cancer sufferers had been left “more fragile” by the pandemic.