19 hours ago
Gaza's largest hospital forced to end dialysis services amid fuel crisis
At least 350 kidney failure patients in Gaza face imminent death as the Strip's largest medical complex announces a halt to dialysis sessions due to fuel shortages.
On Tuesday morning, the head of al-Shifa Complex in Gaza City announced that the dialysis ward would completely shut down by noon, as fuel needed to operate the generators had run out.
'This is happening for the first time since the beginning of the war on Gaza,' Dr Muhammad Abu Hassira, a specialist in internal medicine and nephrology at al-Shifa Medical Complex, told Middle East Eye.
'During the worst periods of the war, the dialysis unit was forced to suspend operations multiple times for several days due to Israeli raids on the hospital. Today, the hospital is still partially functioning, but we simply cannot run the dialysis machines because there is no fuel.'
Dr Abu Hassira confirmed that the dialysis ward had completely shut down earlier in the day, with the small amount of remaining fuel running a single generator reserved exclusively for the intensive care unit.
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'Kidney failure patients came today, and we painfully had to ask them to go back home. This has very serious repercussions on their health,' he added.
On 19 June, United Nations agencies warned that vital services are 'hours away' from shutting down.
'We are really - unless the situation changes - hours away from a catastrophic decline and a shutdown of more facilities if no fuel enters or more fuel isn't retrieved immediately,' Olga Cherevko from the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said in a statement.
According to OCHA, between 15 May and 9 June, Israeli authorities denied access to northern Gaza 14 times, preventing fuel retrieval and resulting in the looting of approximately 260,000 litres essential for running hospitals and other lifesaving services.
Collapse of health services
'I cannot imagine what will happen to my grandmother if she doesn't receive her regular dialysis sessions this week. They had already been reduced from three to just two per week,' Ahmed al-Sayed, 31, told MEE.
'If she misses even one session, she feels suffocated and struggles to breathe. But if it goes beyond that, her body starts to swell, and it won't be long before she dies.'
'The shutdown of the dialysis unit at al-Shifa Hospital today means the imminent death of hundreds of patients'
- Muhammad Abu Hassira, doctor
Before the recent shutdown of the dialysis ward, patients had been facing several challenges that frequently disrupted or cancelled their sessions.
By July 2024, Gaza City had lost nearly all of its water production capacity, with approximately 88 percent of its water wells and 100 percent of its desalination plants damaged or destroyed, according to Oxfam International.
This destruction of water infrastructure has left medical staff struggling to secure the clean water required to operate dialysis machines.
Even after the ceasefire and partial rebuilding of al-Shifa's dialysis ward, the water shortage remains critical, continuing to threaten the lives of patients who cannot survive without regular, uninterrupted care.
On numerous occasions, dialysis sessions have been cancelled due to the lack of water.
'We already struggle with transportation, often walking most of the way while pushing her in a wheelchair to reach the hospital,' Sayed added.
'Because of the fuel crisis, taxis are rarely available. Sometimes we miss her dialysis session altogether while searching for one, or because we arrive too late.'
Since October 2023, more than 400 kidney patients in the Gaza Strip have died due to war-related conditions and ongoing restrictions, according to Gaza's Ministry of Health.
The breakdown of the healthcare system has been driven by Israeli military assaults on hospitals, ongoing blockades on essential medicines, and the cutting off of electricity, food, and water.
But the deadliest blow for kidney patients came when Israeli forces stormed al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical complex.
Since then, the hospital's dialysis ward has been struggling to maintain its operations.
Imminent death
According to doctors at al-Shifa Hospital, the death of around 41 percent of kidney patients since the beginning of Israel's war on the Strip did not alleviate the pressure on the dialysis units, as the number of residents suffering from kidney failure has increased during the war, due to the lack of access to healthy food and clean drinking water.
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Gaza's Ministry of Health's records show that there are 728 kidney failure patients across the coastal envlave, distributed among four dialysis centres in northern, central, and southern Gaza. About half of these patients receive treatment at al-Shifa Hospital.
Typically, patients require 12 hours of dialysis per week. However, even under the best conditions before the dialysis unit shut down, the hospital could only provide four to six hours of dialysis per patient.
Currently, approximately 30 dialysis machines are available at al-Shifa Hospital, serving over 350 kidney failure patients in Gaza City and northern Gaza, especially after Israeli forces bombed the Noura al-Kaabi dialysis centre in the northern Gaza Strip in June, which had provided vital kidney dialysis services.
'The shutdown of the dialysis unit at al-Shifa Hospital today means the imminent death of hundreds of patients,' Dr Abu Hassira said.
'Some patients' condition will already begin to deteriorate today because they missed their dialysis session, while most of them only have two or three days before their condition worsens, and then they will start dying.'
