Gaza’s Ministry of Health has sounded a desperate alarm, declaring the Strip’s healthcare system is on the verge of complete collapse amid Israel’s relentless siege and military assault. In a chilling statement released Wednesday, officials warned that without immediate international intervention, thousands more will die, not from bombs alone, but from a deliberately engineered humanitarian breakdown.

With hospitals in ruins, electricity dwindling, and medicine supplies exhausted, the few remaining medical facilities are buckling under the weight of mass casualties. Just 45 out of 312 operating rooms remain partially functional. Oxygen stations are nearly defunct. Nearly half of all essential medicines have run out entirely. Doctors, forced to choose who gets treated, are operating in conditions described as unlivable.

At least 513 patients, including hundreds with cancer, have died after being denied permission to exit Gaza for urgent treatment. Over 11,000 cancer patients have now been left without care following the destruction of specialist centres. Kidney failure deaths have surged to 41% due to medication and dialysis interruptions.

Northern Gaza has been emptied of hospitals, either bombed, besieged, or rendered inaccessible. Gaza City’s remaining facilities are overwhelmed, while shelters and displacement camps report catastrophic levels of malnutrition and disease. The Ministry has recorded nearly 60,000 cases of bloody diarrhoea and over 250,000 respiratory infections since the start of the year, directly linked to the blockade of clean water, food, and sanitation.

The Ministry warns that this is not a natural collapse, it is the result of deliberate policy. With vaccine supplies also cut off, the threat of disease outbreaks looms large. Unless the international community takes decisive action now, Gaza’s healthcare system, along with its people, faces extinction.