In Gaza, where drones circle endlessly overhead and hospitals function by candlelight, 25-year-old Nour Al-Din Al-Kurdi clings to life in the wreckage of a health system on its knees. Struck by an Israeli drone on 24 February 2024 while trying to collect supplies in Tel Al-Hawa, Nour lost his friend that day—and nearly his own life.

Shrapnel tore through his body, leaving injuries too complex for Gaza’s barely-operational hospitals to treat. His family’s desperate effort to reach the Jordanian Hospital was met with the cruel realities of war: no fuel for ambulances, no power for surgeries. They paid an impossible price just to keep the lights on for a single operation.

Multiple surgeries followed, but metal fragments still remain buried deep inside him. The pain is constant, electric, and unexplained—because diagnostic machines like MRI scanners sit idle in a territory starved of electricity and medical tools. “There is no diagnosis, no solution,” Nour says. “Just pain.”

Yet even as his body fights to heal, Nour dreams of resuming his studies in Islamic Sharia and marrying his fiancée. In a place where futures are torn apart before they begin, hope itself is an act of resistance.

His story is not rare. In Gaza, the injured are left to suffer in silence, while borders remain sealed and international promises dissolve into the dust. Without urgent action to restore access to care, many more lives like Nour’s will slowly slip away—broken not only by bombs, but by the world’s refusal to act.