The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced on Wednesday that 70 percent of hospital generators in the Strip have gone out of service due to shortages of fuel, lubricants, and spare parts caused by the Israeli blockade.
During a press conference held at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Zaher Al-Wahidi, director of the ministry’s Health Information Center, stated that the fuel and lubricant crisis threatens to shut down critical and life-saving hospital departments at any moment.
Al-Wahidi refuted Israeli claims of facilitating the entry of medical aid and logistical supplies into the Strip, describing them as “a farce and a blatant attempt to whitewash the genocide and cover up the war of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.”
He added that what Israel allows to enter “represents only a tiny fraction that does not meet the minimum operational needs of health facilities, leaving them struggling between life and death.” He said, “The health system in the Gaza Strip is being subjected to a systematic and mass execution, exceeding the bounds of a humanitarian catastrophe and escalating into a full-fledged health genocide.” Al-Wahidi explained that this situation led to “public transportation companies and buses announcing a complete and near-total shutdown on Wednesday,” noting that this prevented hundreds of medical personnel from reaching their workplaces, exacerbating the isolation of health facilities and paralyzing their ability to respond to emergencies.
He continued, “Health facilities have become isolated structures, slowly dying, under the continued suffocating siege and the prevention of the entry of basic necessities.”
He pointed out that this coincides with an “unprecedented shortage” of medicines and medical supplies, the breakdown of diagnostic equipment, and the closure of treatment opportunities abroad for patients and wounded individuals on waiting lists.
Al-Wahidi appealed to the international community, the Security Council, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to “take immediate and urgent action to allow the entry of urgent medical and operational supplies.”
