More than 1,000 patients have died while waiting for emergency medical evacuation from war-torn Gaza in the past year and a half, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on the X platform that the UN agency and its partners have evacuated more than 10,600 patients from Gaza with serious medical conditions, including more than 5,600 children, since the start of the war more than two years ago.
He warned, however, that many more patients remain in Gaza waiting to be evacuated to receive appropriate health care.
Citing figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, Ghebreyesus said 1,092 patients were known to have died while waiting for medical evacuation between July 2024 and November 28 this year alone.
“That figure is likely an underestimate,” Ghebreyesus warned.
He called on more countries to “open the doors” to patients from Gaza and to resume medical evacuations to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
“Lives depend on it,” he said.
The WHO previously estimated that more than 16,500 patients still needed treatment outside Gaza, while a senior official at the charity Doctors Without Borders told AFP earlier this month that the real number was probably three to four times higher.
As of December 1, more than 30 countries had received patients from Gaza, but only a few, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, had accepted large numbers.
A US-brokered ceasefire has halted fighting in Gaza, which began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
The agreement, in force since October 10, remains fragile, however, with Israel and Hamas accusing each other of violating the agreement almost daily.
