Gaza healthcare crisis: Kamal Adwan Hospital to stop operating in next 24 hours

The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza will "cease to function" within the next 24 hours due to a severe shortage of fuel and lack of medical supplies needed to treat patients, its director has warned.

The hospital’s neonatal and pediatric care departments have stopped functioning due to a lack of oxygen needed to operate generation plants as a consequence of fuel shortages, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya said.

Several major departments in the hospital are already out of service, including the dialysis department - the only one in northern Gaza -, threatening the lives of many kidney patients.

Abu Safiya told The New Arab’s Arabic-language site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that a new medical disaster is occurring in northern Gaza, and appealed to the World Health Organization (WHO) to urgently take action on the situation in the war-hit territory.

Israel has carried out a brutal military offensive in the Gaza Strip since 7 October, killing at least 40,233 Palestinians, targeting key infrastructure, including hospitals, over the last 10 months.

The situation at Kamal Adwan comes one day after the Al-Awda Hospital's administration warned the facility would be out of action for the same reasons, Abu Safiya said, with intensive and neonatal care, emergency services, and general surgery now under threat. 

Both hospitals became the only two operating medical facilities in the north after Israel took the Indonesian hospital out of service last November.

Less than 13 out of 36 hospitals are partially functioning, according to a UN report in July.

Hospitals all over the Gaza Strip have been faced with fuel and medical equipment shortages since the start of Israel’s military offensive in the territory over 10 months ago, risking the lives of scores of patients.

Medical facilities have been relentlessly attacked since 7 October, including the Kamal Adwan Hospital. The Beit Lahia medical facility was the subject of a devastating Israeli siege in December last year, where forces shot indiscriminately at anything and anyone within its vicinity in what was described as a war crime.

The Israeli army bulldozed over tents housing displaced Palestinians in the hospital’s courtyard, according to footage shared online, crushing them and burying them alive. Among those killed were also the injured and sick, triggering global outrage.

Over 70 members of staff were detained in the siege, with the Israeli army claiming the hospital was being used as Hamas a military operations centre.

In May, missiles struck the hospital’s emergency department, prompting panic-stricken medical staff to evacuate as many patients as possible, fearing further strikes.

The hospital was subsequently surrounded by Israeli snipers and struck several times, including with artillery shelling.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital was established in 2002 and is northern Gaza’s second largest after the Indonesian Hospital. The medical facility serves the towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.