Gaza Strip: WHO Calls for Evacuation of Sick and Wounded
UN personeel in front of a destroyed Hospital in Gaza Strip, June 28, 2024 Photo: @WHO
June 28, 2024 Hour: 2:11 pm
The WHO Director-General welcomed yesterday’s evacuation of 21 patients from the coastal enclave.
On Friday, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that more than 10,000 sick and wounded in Gaza are in need of medical care abroad.
Related:
Gaza Residents in Desperate Need of Health Care: UNRWA
“We call for the facilitation of medical evacuation through all possible routes, including (the Rafah and Karem Shalom border crossings), to Egypt, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and from there to other countries, when necessary,” the official wrote on his X social media account.
“There is a need for sustained medical evacuations through a safe, timely, transparent and organized process,”he stressed, adding that these patients urgently need life-saving, specialized care that they cannot get in Gaza.
The WHO Director-General welcomed yesterday’s evacuation of 21 patients from the coastal enclave.
This is the first time since the Rafah crossing was closed on 7 May, said Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
On that date, the crossing was attacked by the Israeli army on the grounds of preventing the entry of arms and military supplies to the Islamic Resistance Movement and its allies.
The operation sparked a wave of international condemnation because Rafah was the only gateway for medicine, fuel and food to the besieged territory for more than seven months.
At the start of the ground offensive in the area, more than a million Palestinians were refugees in the nearby town of the same name, but after almost two months of the war campaign there are fewer than 60,000 left, according to the UN.
In an interview with the Voice of Palestine radio station last month, Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan denounced the catastrophic state of the sector in the coastal enclave.
More than 80 per cent of Gaza’s hospitals and health care centers are out of service as a result of Israel’s continued aggression, he said at the time.
Autor: OSG
Fuente: WHO-Aljazeera-The Star
