Israel stalls delivery of medical aid to Gaza

GENEVA: Medical care is still lacking for the population across the Gaza Strip around two weeks after the start of the latest ceasefire, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.
Supplies of medicines and medical equipment, which had been blocked for months, have now started to arrive, Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Israeli-occupied territories, said in Geneva.
However, as Israel has only opened two border crossings, it is difficult to meet demand, he said.
The organisation said only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the coastal territory are partially functional, as are 64 of 181 health centres and 109 of 359 treatment rooms.
Important hospitals, including the European Gaza Hospital, are located in the area still controlled by Israel and cannot be reached by patients.
The WHO says it has all the necessary equipment in the region, but needs better and faster access. Israel controls access to the Gaza Strip and has to authorise aid deliveries to the sealed-off territory.
So far, each shipment has been inspected individually and a separate permit has had to be applied for each item. Peeperkorn said it had taken the WHO two and a half years to get eight mobile X-ray machines into the Gaza Strip.
The WHO has drawn up a list of essential medicines and equipment; and is urging the Israeli authorities to approve them across the board rather than re-examine each delivery. It says there are only two CT scanners in the Gaza Strip and more capacity is urgently needed.
The UN's health agency pleaded for thousands of people in desperate need of medical care to be allowed to leave Gaza, in what it said would be a 'game-changer'.
WHO has supported the medical evacuation of nearly 7,800 patients out of the Gaza Strip since the war with Israel began two years ago — and estimates there are 15,000 people currently needing treatment outside the Palestinian territory.
But a US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect on October 10 has not sped up the process — the WHO has been able to evacuate only 41 critical patients since then.
Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories, called for all crossings out of Gaza into Israel and Egypt to be opened up during the ceasefire — not only for the entry of aid but for medical evacuations too.
'All medical corridors need to be opened', he said, particularly to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as happened routinely before the war.
'It is vital and is the most cost-effective route. If that route opened, it would really be a... game-changer'.
Speaking via video link from Jerusalem, he told journalists in Geneva that two evacuations were planned for next week, but he wanted them every day and said the WHO was ready to take 'a minimum of 50 patients per day'. — Agencies