The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has documented at least 1,000 to 1,500 kidney failure patients in Gaza on the brink of collapse due to the lack of medical and therapeutic services.
The organization reported that there are “thousands of people with chronic and serious diseases in the besieged strip, including kidney failure patients who face a slow death amid Israel’s genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, ongoing since 7 October 2023.”
“Nearly 60 kidney failure patients are at risk of death at any moment, and at least 20 others have already died, following their inability to receive adequate treatment as a result of Israel’s ongoing military attacks,” Euro-Med said.
Israel’s frequent and intense bombing has been preventing patients from accessing hospitals for dialysis sessions and other necessary treatments.
With fuel shortage and electricity being cut by the regime people have been unable to obtain salt-free water, increasing complications for patients undergoing dialysis.
The human rights group said the “total lack of electricity has caused the desalination plant that typically pumps water to Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital to go out of service. This has affected the hospital’s small number of dialysis machines, some of which have broken down, making it impossible for patients to receive the health care they desperately need. Patients are forced to receive dialysis sporadically, based on hospital schedules rather than on their medical needs.”
Shifa is estimated to be treating about 40 patients with kidney failure at a rate of two sessions per week. Before the ongoing Israeli military attacks, the hospital was treating 450 patients.
Israel’s weaponizing starvation in the Gaza Strip that has resulted in full-scale famine has worsened the suffering of kidney failure patients as they are unable to access nutritious food. Most people are subsisting on legumes and dirty water, which has resulted in the decrease of kidney function causing toxins to accumulate that can prove fatal to patients’ health.
The human rights organization said that Israel is systematically targeting Gaza’s health care system, forcing most hospitals and health centers to shut down entirely.
Due to Israel’s war on Gaza large numbers of new patients have not been officially added to the health system database to receive the follow-up treatments they require.
Prior to the regimes military assault, the health ministry of Gaza had declared that there was a critical shortage of medical care for kidney failure patients. The ministry had stated that it was offering 13,000 dialysis sessions per month in six centers across the Gaza Strip, and that the supplies it had on hand, such as blood transfusion tubes, cannulas, and dialysis filter, were almost completely depleted.
Euro-Med urged the international community to act swiftly and force Israel to end its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. The group asked global organisations to provide humanitarian aid to save the lives of intensely vulnerable individuals in the coastal strip.
