Hospitals across the Gaza Strip are sliding deeper into paralysis as essential medicines and medical supplies vanish from their shelves, leaving patients stranded in wards that can no longer offer effective treatment. What remains of the territory’s health system is stretched beyond its limits, with doctors and nurses forced to make impossible choices amid collapsing infrastructure and relentless pressure.

Facilities that once provided urgent and specialised care are now reduced to holding spaces where the wounded and chronically ill wait without certainty. Medical staff describe a reality in which keeping services running has become an act of endurance rather than planning, as repeated destruction and prolonged restrictions choke any prospect of recovery. The wider impact of the genocidal war is evident not only in damaged buildings, but in the slow erosion of the capacity to heal.

Even the most basic medications have become scarce, leaving patients to endure severe pain and untreated conditions. Treatments considered routine elsewhere are now unavailable, undermining care for those with long-term illnesses and complicating emergency responses. Health workers warn that the continued depletion of supplies threatens to turn hospitals into silent witnesses to preventable loss of life, as the health sector edges closer to total collapse.