Amid the rubble of destroyed homes and in displacement tents scorched by autumn winds, the women of Gaza are fighting another battle no less brutal than the war: a battle with breast cancer, exacerbated by years of blockade and destruction, and compounded by the lack of treatment and the collapse of the healthcare system.
An Al Jazeera report highlighted this suffering amid the lack of medical equipment and medications needed to treat them. This report coincided with October, which was designated globally as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
In one of these tents, a woman in her fifties tried to arrange her children’s blankets while recounting her pain. She said she contracted the disease more than a decade ago, after surviving a white phosphorus attack in 2008.
She underwent two mastectomy surgeries, but the tumor returned five years later. With the outbreak of the recent war, she stopped receiving treatment after the Turkish hospital where she was being treated was destroyed.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Nada, medical director of the Gaza Cancer Center, confirms that the war of extermination in the Gaza Strip has been disastrous for cancer patients, leading to a sharp deterioration in health services and delayed diagnosis, allowing the disease to spread throughout the bodies of many women.
