Gaza's healthcare system about to collapse: WHO warns

Geneva: The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday that the healthcare system might collapse in southern and central Gaza. The global organisation pointed out hundreds of medical staff fleeing the region to save their own lives, Reuters reports.

While only a third of hospitals in Gaza still operate, some of them are operating only partly, after Israel's relentless attack since October last year.

The intensified fighting in central and southern Gaza has put a burden on already struggling hospitals in the region.

WHO emergency medical teams coordinator in Gaza, Sean Casey, informed in a video press briefing that situations are particularly worrying in Al Aqsa Hospital and European Gaza Hospital.

Casey said that the mentioned healthcare centres couldn't be compromised. They are the last line of secondary and tertiary health care in Gaza and must be protected.

"…from the north to the south, it's been dropping, hospital after hospital," Reuters quoted Casey.

He continued that in the southern city of Khan Younis, patients are risking life to get to hospitals since continuous fighting is going on there. He said that, in Al Aqsa, 70% of staff left their posts, and hundreds of patients also fled there.

Fearing their lives, many of the staff from Nasser Hospital joined refugee shelters in Gaza's southernmost tip. There, a single doctor is tending more than 100 burn victims, Casey said.

He said that the health system is suffering as health workers are not able to go to the workplace or care for patients since they fear for their own lives. Even patients and their families are scared to approach hospitals since they are scared for lives.

"We are seeing the health system collapse at a very rapid pace," Reuters quoted him.

WHO representative from Occupied Palestine Territory said that it has become difficult for the organisation to supply medical aid inside Gaza.