In Gaza, the war is not only claiming lives through bombs but also through silence—an agonising, slow death for those with chronic illnesses. According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, 42% of kidney failure patients have already died since the beginning of Israel’s assault. These are not casualties of airstrikes, but victims of deliberate deprivation: no clean water, no medicine, no way out.

Dr Marwan Al-Hams, who oversees field hospitals in the Strip, said that the number of kidney patients has fallen from 1,150 to fewer than 700—not because they’ve been evacuated or cured, but because hundreds have died waiting for care. Dialysis sessions have been cut from three a week to just two, often lasting half the needed time. This means patients are slowly poisoned by their own bodies, in a place where the blockade has closed every possible exit.

Many of these patients are among Gaza’s most vulnerable—elderly, fragile, and now left to endure with no pain relief, no hope. Al-Hams said hospitals have reached breaking point. Intensive care units are full, resources are depleted, and medical staff are working in impossible conditions, surrounded by ongoing bombings and mass casualties.

The blockade has turned Gaza into an open-air prison for the sick, with humanitarian pleas repeatedly ignored. Dr Al-Hams urged the international community to act—not just with words, but by forcing the entry of medical teams and supplies. Without immediate intervention, more lives will be lost—not in explosions, but quietly, behind hospital walls that may collapse next.