GAZA (Dispatches) – Health workers in the besieged Gaza Strip have staged a protest against Zionist regime restrictions on the import of medical equipment despite repeated warnings that the lives of hundreds of patients are in danger amid a years-long blockade against the coastal enclave.
The protesters drove a convoy of some 25 ambulances to voice their strong objection to the occupying regime’s ban on the import of medical and diagnostic devices for patients in hospitals in the besieged Gaza Strip for 16 years.
“Preventing the entry of medical devices means the slow death of Gaza patients,” read a banner spread across one of the ambulances used in the rally.
“Medical equipment is crumbling,” said another poster, in Arabic, Hebrew and English.
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency cited the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza as expressing concern about the lives of thousands of patients facing risk as a result of the ban on the entry of medical equipment and spare parts.
“There is severe crowding in the reception departments, and there is suffering for the medical staff inside the operating rooms. Some of these devices are used in diagnosing complex fracture cases, and some are used in removing clots from patients who have a stroke in the brain or heart, and the other parts are used in x-ray work,” said Medhat Abbas, the ministry’s director.
“Thousands of patients need these devices, and thus delaying their entry means an increase in the suffering of these patients and overcrowding in hospitals, which are already suffering from severe overcrowding due to the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip,” he added.
Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the ministry, also said the protest came after the Zionist regime’s prevention of four mobile X-ray machines from entering Gaza, in addition to equipment used to treat stroke patients and those in intensive care.
The restrictions “expose patients of oncology, heart, strokes, complex fractures and intensive care to health risks,” Qudra said, adding that importing spare parts for old machines was also an issue.