Feud deepens Gaza health crisis
gaza — Ritta Al Jalees doesn’t care who’s to blame for the deteriorating state of healthcare in Gaza. All she wants is to ensure her three sons get the help they need to breathe.
The boys, aged nine months and six and seven years, all of whom suffer from cystic fibrosis, are getting weaker because Gaza is running out of the drugs needed to treat the inherited lung disease and because of cuts to power for oxygen pumps and ventilators.
“I blame all sides,” said Jalees, a mother of six, as she held her youngest at Al Rantissi Hospital for Children in Gaza City. “Are these children at fault?”
Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 after Hamas seized control of the territory.
A new stage in the struggle between Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas is turning the screws on the enclave afresh.
In what is seen as the latest step in an effort to force Hamas to relinquish its control of Gaza, Abbas in June reduced the payments the PA makes to Israel for electricity it supplies to the territory.
The resulting cuts mean that Gaza’s two million people now have only 3 to 4 hours of power a day, forcing hospitals and other medical facilities to rely chiefly on generators and expensive fuel, while many private homes just go without.
Hamas says that Abbas restricted transfers of medicine to Gaza in March, accusing Hamas of failing to reimburse the PA for its purchases, and cut the salaries of its officials in May.
The spokesman for Gaza’s Hamasrun health ministry, Ashraf Al Qidra, said PA shipments of medicine, especially drugs to treat cancer and cystic fibrosis, have dropped 35 per cent since late March.
“We believe the actions of the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli occupation together are undermining the entire health service system in Gaza,” Qidra said.
Hamas also accuses the PA of delaying the transfer of hundreds of seriously ill patients to Israel or the Israeli-occupied West Bank, actions which it says has resulted in 13 deaths since April.
The PA denies the allegations and accuses Israel of holding back permits. Israel denies the allegations.
Whoever is at fault, a UN report released last week said power shortages are deepening a humanitarian crisis, with hospitals in a precarious condition, water shortages increasing and raw sewage being dumped into the Mediterranean because treatment plants aren’t functioning.
“The two million residents of Gaza are suffering through a humanitarian crisis that is entirely humanmade,” the report said. “It represents a complete failure of all parties to uphold their fundamental human rights obligations, including the inalienable right to life.”
Omar Al Naser, director of media and public relations at the West Bank-based ministry of health, said Hamas’ complaints were politically motivated. Hospitals in the West Bank were also suffering from drug shortages, he said.
“Shortages in Gaza may happen, just like there are shortages in the north counties (West Bank), because there are debts the health ministry is trying to pay,” he added.
Police officer Ashraf Shanty and his wife Jihan, who have two children
The residents of Gaza are suffering through a humanitarian crisis ... It represents a complete failure of all parties to uphold their fundamental human rights obligations, including the inalienable right to life Ashraf Al Qidra, Hamas official
with cystic fibrosis, started a charity in 2008 to help patients get medication and medical checks.
“I have two sons suffering from the disease but I see myself as the father of 320 cystic fibrosis patients, whom I must help,” Ashraf Shanty said. “Without Creon, the enzyme of life, they may die,” he said. —