Patients die in Gaza waiting for medical evacuations Israel keeps blocking

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – Fifteen-year-old Rafa al-Qudra had one hope in life: to get out of the Gaza Strip in time to save her sight. On Saturday, before Israel gave her that permission , everything turned pitch black.

Sitting in an open-sided shelter covered in thick nylon in the al-Mawasi coastal area in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis governorate, Rafa continuously pressed her hands over her eyes, either to block the light she can no longer see but still burns her eyes or to hide her falling tears.

“Is this it for me? Will I ever see again? Will I read again? Write? Draw? Or be able to walk around this tent without someone’s help?” asked the tearful teenager, the skin around whose eyes was reddened by the constant pressing of her hands.

Her father, Rafat, 57, explained that Rafa’s condition was manageable before the war with glasses and check-ups. “What followed compounded everything: months of displacement, carrying luggage she was medically prohibited from carrying, malnutrition, dust and the collapse of specialist care,” the father of five said helplessly.

In recent months, Rafa’s eye pressure – measured in millimetres of mercury (mmHg), the standard medical unit for pressure – built up: 50mmHg in Rafa’s right eye and 35mmHg in her left, compared with a normal range of 12 to 20mmHg, leaving her in unbearable pain.

She had undergone multiple laser procedures, surgery on her right eye during the first week of June and lens removal. The solution used to reduce her eye pressure had expired – out of date since July – because nothing else was available in Gaza.

Rafa is one of more than 18,500 patients the World Health Organization (WHO) says require medical evacuation from Gaza for treatment unavailable in the Strip. Israel’s bombardments in its genocidal war on the enclave, which began in October 2023, have devastated Gaza’s health sector, which was struggling long before the war, pushing it to the brink.

The October Gaza ceasefire explicitly required the resumption of medical evacuations from the Palestinian enclave. Israel violated those terms almost immediately, announcing that Rafah, the main crossing for Palestinians out of Gaza, would remain closed. It permitted only limited movement months later.