Munir al-Bursh, Director General of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, has warned that the Strip’s health sector is in a state of unprecedented collapse as Israel continues to block the entry of medical and humanitarian supplies. Out of 38 hospitals that once served the population, only 15 remain partially functional.

Al-Bursh said Israeli forces have directly targeted medical staff, killing 1,590 health workers, including nearly 200 doctors, and detaining 1,360 others, among them senior physicians such as Hussam Abu Safia and Marwan Al-Hams. He described the current humanitarian situation as “more dangerous than any previous stage,” stressing that the emaciated faces of children and women now “speak louder than any Israeli propaganda.”

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 40,000 infants and 250,000 children are at risk of dying from malnutrition within the next six months if the blockade continues. The ministry also recorded 320 miscarriages linked to hunger and lack of medical care, along with almost 19,000 cases of acute diarrhoea, half of them children, caused by polluted and saline water. Al-Bursh further revealed that anaemia has reached unprecedented levels, with only two in ten people fit to donate blood.

He warned that 70 percent of essential medicines have already run out, threatening the lives of thousands of patients and wounded individuals in urgent need of treatment and evacuation abroad. “Without immediate international intervention, Gaza’s children will continue to die slowly before the eyes of the world,” Al-Bursh said.