The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued an urgent warning over the catastrophic state of Gaza’s healthcare system, now on the brink of total collapse as a result of the suffocating Israeli blockade that has prevented the entry of life-saving humanitarian aid.

In a press briefing on Monday, Dr. Hanan Balkhy, WHO’s Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, delivered a grim update on the conditions inside the besieged enclave. “Gaza is being strangled,” she said. “Hospitals are running without medicine, without anaesthetics, without the most basic supplies required to treat the wounded and the sick.”

According to Dr. Balkhy, 64% of essential medical equipment is now completely depleted, alongside 43% of medications and 42% of vital vaccines, leaving hundreds of thousands at risk. She revealed that 51 WHO aid trucks remain blocked at Gaza’s borders, unable to enter due to Israeli restrictions—despite the intensifying humanitarian emergency.

“Can you imagine a surgeon trying to operate on a child without anaesthetic?” she asked. “That is the horrifying reality in Gaza today.”

The WHO’s warning comes as part of a wider global outcry over the Israeli-imposed blockade, which has been tightened since March 2, preventing the entry of any food, fuel, medicine, or humanitarian supplies into the devastated territory. The blockade has turned Gaza’s hospitals into graveyards, where the sick and wounded are left to die slowly without care.

The Israeli regime’s war on Gaza—launched on October 7, 2023—has deliberately and systematically targeted the healthcare infrastructure. Hospitals have been bombed, besieged, stormed, and turned into charnel houses. Doctors, nurses, and displaced civilians sheltering in medical facilities have been killed or detained, depriving the people of Gaza of their last remaining hope for survival.

International human rights groups have described the blockade and the destruction of medical infrastructure as a war crime and part of an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Despite the mounting death toll and the WHO’s desperate pleas, Israel continues to prevent the delivery of humanitarian relief, in open defiance of international law and moral responsibility.

Palestinian medical workers, NGOs, and resistance groups have all echoed the same urgent demand: Lift the siege. Let the aid in. Stop the genocide. (ILKHA)