Gaza’s already shattered healthcare system is edging toward total collapse, doctors warned this week, as Israeli authorities continue to block life-saving medicines, equipment, and humanitarian aid from entering the besieged enclave. The territory’s health director, Dr Munir Al-Bursh, described the blockade as a “drip-feeding policy” designed to keep hospitals on the brink, allowing minimal quantities of aid while depriving thousands of patients of treatment.

Operating rooms are running out of essential anaesthetics and antibiotics, intensive care units are short of oxygen, and emergency wards are forced to turn away patients. Even nutritional supplements for malnourished children are being withheld. More than 350,000 people suffering from chronic illnesses, including diabetes, hypertension, and kidney failure, have now gone weeks without vital medication. “People are dying not only from their wounds but from preventable disease,” Al-Bursh said.

Hospitals across Gaza are surviving on generators and dwindling fuel reserves, while medical staff work around the clock with limited supplies. Doctors describe a scene of exhaustion and despair, surgeries conducted by torchlight, premature babies gasping for air in powerless incubators, and wards overflowing with untreated patients. “This is an unprecedented humanitarian disaster,” Al-Bursh warned, urging the international community to act before the situation spirals into irreversible catastrophe.

He called on the United Nations and global powers to demand the immediate opening of crossings to allow medical supplies and the evacuation of critical patients. “The world cannot watch as an entire health system is deliberately strangled into silence,” he said.