Over 15,000 Patients in Gaza in Urgent Need of Medical Evacuation, WHO Warns
The World Health Organization (WHO) representative in the occupied Palestinian territories has called for the immediate reopening of all crossings into Gaza, citing a deepening humanitarian crisis in the region. He warned that without urgent evacuation and transfer of patients, saving critical cases could take up to a decade.
Peter Piepercorn stated that approximately 15,000 patients, including 4,000 children, urgently need to be transferred out of Gaza. According to him, the reopening of crossings was part of the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement and should be implemented. He emphasized that the WHO requires broad cooperation from all parties to expand its humanitarian relief operations.
Piepercorn also highlighted the severely limited functionality of Gaza’s healthcare system, warning that only 14 out of 36 hospitals and 64 out of 181 primary care centers are currently operating—and that too with limited capacity. There are just 2,100 hospital beds available for Gaza’s population of 2.1 million. He estimated that rebuilding the health infrastructure would cost roughly $7 billion and would require doubling the current number of healthcare workers.
According to Piepercorn, since the implementation of the current fragile ceasefire, at least 88 people have been killed and 325 wounded in Israeli attacks. He noted that the total death toll since October 2023 has exceeded 68,000.
The rubble from destroyed facilities, residential units, and infrastructure in Gaza is estimated at around 70 million tons. Many of the victims’ bodies remain buried under the ruins.
This report once again underscores the international community’s concern over the dire healthcare, humanitarian, and infrastructural situation in Gaza—a crisis that, under siege and amid the neglect of Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration, has also sparked a sense of shared suffering among many in the region.
