In Gaza, the simple act of seeking medical treatment has become a journey between despair and the unknown. Under constant bombardment and siege, the sick are trapped in a place where hospitals lie in ruins, medicines vanish, and the borders that could offer survival remain sealed. For thousands with cancer, kidney failure, or severe war injuries, every passing day is not measured in hours but in breaths stolen by illness and conflict alike.

Ambulances still snake through shattered streets, carrying patients whose lives hang in the balance. But where can they go? Inside Gaza, health facilities can no longer cope. Outside, passage is blocked, with referrals trapped in endless waiting lists that rarely move. Patients cling to scraps of hope, yet the system is so broken that survival often feels like a lottery few will ever win.

Speaking to SAFA News Agency, cancer patient Umm Mohammed al-Louh described how her condition worsened when chemotherapy was halted nearly two years into the war. Her medical referral, issued a year ago, has yielded nothing. “My name remains stuck on the waiting list, and no one cares about my condition,” she said, her words carrying both pain and resignation. Another cancer sufferer, Nabila al-Zein, revealed how she watches others secure travel permits while her own appeals go unanswered. “If the situation continues like this, I will die,” she warned.

For Gaza’s sick, there is no escape from this cruel paradox: to remain is to wither without care, to try and leave is to confront an opaque system marked by delay, obstruction, and mistrust. As the war grinds on, patients continue to fade away in silence, denied both treatment and the dignity of choice. In a place where death waits at every corner, illness has become yet another siege.