For some, the only hope is treatment abroad, but not all survive the long and desperate waiting for Israel’s approval.
Abdel Karim Wahdan no longer has energy to speak. When they receive visits, the eight -year -old pretends to be sleeping so that no one looks at him. Among his frequent dialysis sessions, he cries. He says his bones hurt.
Abdel Karim is dying. His death could be avoided, but as he lives in Gaza, he does not have access to the treatment that would save his life. What began as acute renal failure became chronic: his small body began to swell and he spends his days between hospital beds and injections he hates.
“My son suffers a lot. The hospital has become your home. The doctors are powerless and I can only watch and pray,” said her mother, Najwa Wahdan.
As the disease progressed, Abdel Karim was also diagnosed with malnutrition, as food began to disappear from Gaza’s markets. Your only hope is to be evacuated from Gaza to receive medical treatment abroad. Wahdan filed a medical referral request four months ago, but is still waiting.
Abdel Karim is one of the thousands of people in Gaza awaiting treatment abroad. Obtaining approval for a medical evacuation is a long and hard process that can take years. Zahir Al-Wehadi, head of the Gaza Ministry of Health Department, said: “We have more than 16,000 patients [em Gaza] that need treatment abroad. We already lost more than 600 patients who died while still waiting for the trip. ”
Tens of thousands of people in Gaza have been injured by Israelite attacks and shots in the last 22 months of a war that has killed more than 61,000 people. Diseases and illnesses, many of which did not exist in Gaza before the war, are proliferating in the territory, as solid waste accumulates and people live overlooked, with limited access to drinking water or hygiene products.
The repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals and the blockade of essentials to the territory by Israel left the medical sector devastated. Doctors in Gaza say that they often do not have the materials needed to treat patients. In such cases, they issue a referral for patients to be evacuated abroad.
Israel controls who enters and leaves Gaza. People who need medical treatment abroad should have their departure approved by COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for the Palestinian humanitarian affairs. In December, the World Health Organization stated that the pace of Gaza’s medical evacuations was so slow that it would take five to ten years to eliminate the delay. COGAT was contacted to comment on the matter.
Gaza’s medical evacuations have decreased since Israel imposed a blockade in early March.
Waiting for medical evacuation is torture. Patients and their families cannot accelerate the process and can do nothing but expect approval to arrive before death.
During the long wait, Abdel Karim’s physical and mental state deteriorated. He has lost his ability to walk, and when the blood pressure drops too much, is temporarily blind and has seizures.
“What I liked the most at Abdel Karim was his calm; he never caused problems like other children,” said his mother. “He loved to study Arab and English. He wanted to be a doctor.”
But the months of illness deeply affected the child who was once happy. “In the last three months, he’s been withdrawn, irritable, shouting frequently and without speaking to anyone – this is not the calm son I knew before,” said Wahdan.
Najwa Wahdan enjoys a moment of happiness with his son after they have been able to buy eggplants. Some of the few fresh vegetables they had eaten in recent months. Photography: Seham Tantesh.
Many children died as they awaited their evacuation approval.
Amina al-Jourani was not very worried when, in January 2024, her 15-year-old son, Nidal, arrived home with a foot injury. Israel had bombed a house nearby and Nidal had gone to the scene to help transport the injured to the hospital on his bicycle. When he returned home, he had a small cut on his foot.
“At first we didn’t show much importance. It seemed like a simple and ordinary wound,” said Jourani. But in the following days, Nidal began to have fever. It began to lose weight and your skin was covered with red spots.
It passed a year and a half until the doctors approved the request for transfer of nidal abroad, since their state, although persistent, did not seem fatal. The hospital where it was hospitalized, the European hospital, was bombarded and he was sent home. His fever rose and his foot turned blue. Nidal went to another hospital, where they diagnosed renal failure. He died two days later on June 2, 2025.
Doctors claim that it is impossible to deal with the volume of cases, especially since the humanitarian situation has worsened since Israel established a severe blockade to humanitarian aid in Gaza in March. Humanitarian aid groups claim that the worst hunger scenario is unfolding in Gaza. Israel denies that there is a hunger crisis in Gaza and states that the UN is responsible for the poor distribution of humanitarian aid – an allegation that humanitarian aid organisms unanimously reject.
Ragheb Warsh Agha, head of the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital Department of Gastroenterology, said: “Many children die for lack of resources or lack of response to transfer requests. In many cases, child treatment is simple-for example, we may need basic medications, specific treatments that are not available or perform tests for which there is no necessary equipment.”
Dr. Ragheb Warsh Agha. “Many children die due to lack of resources.” Photography: Seham Tantesh.
Agha said the overcrowded hospital often had to put three children in a single bed, which favored the spread of disease. The hunger crisis in Gaza also contributed to the disease to spread more easily. The lack of food weakens people’s immune system and makes them more susceptible to disease. Recovery is more difficult when the body has no food.
For parents who expect the mechanisms of bureaucracy to give them the piece of paper that means life to their children, impotence is agonizing.
Jourani said: “At the height of his illness, Nidal gave me 100 Shekels who had spared and said, ‘Mother, keep it to me so I can buy many sweets, chocolates and snacks when the passage [da fronteira] open’.”
Two and a half months after Nidal’s death, his mother received a message: his transfer request had been approved and his evacuation request granted.
“Nidal has died and the money is still in my bag,” she said between tears. “He died waiting for the tickets to be open.”
