PIC, Occupied Palestine
Cancer in the Gaza Strip is no longer a disease that is to be treated but a slow death. The Strip suffers from almost complete collapse of the health system as a result of the continuous Israeli aggression, which destroyed hospitals, cut off the means of diagnosis, and left thousands of patients struggling with the disease without medicine or medical follow-up.
For more than two years, cancer patients have been facing an unprecedented reality as specialized treatment centers have stopped working, essential medicines have run out, and the doors of hope have been closed to those who have been waiting for chemotherapy sessions or life-saving surgical interventions.
Treatment journeys stopped when the war began
The Palestinian citizen Mahmoud Saed was supposed to start the first chemotherapy and surgical sessions for rectal cancer on October 8, 2023 in the Turkish hospital in Gaza, yet the outbreak of aggression prevented this.
Since that date, Mahmoud has not received any treatment alternatives, and his health condition has worsened over time.
Saed told the PIC that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer a year ago, and it was removed. But he still lives on bags for faeces and urine, waiting for surgery that enables him to recover.
“All I wish for today is a treatment referral outside the Strip before it is too late,” Saed said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian citizen Samar al-Halabi began her journey with the disease with a breast tumor at the beginning of the genocide. Throughout the war, her condition exacerbated to a stage 4 cancer as a result of forced displacement, living in tents, lack of medical follow-up, and targeting hospitals and health staff.
“I am facing extreme difficulty in obtaining even painkillers, as well as moving between the destroyed cities of the Gaza Strip, forced to pay about 160 shekels per treatment trip, in light of the scarcity of transportation and the lack of health infrastructure,” al- Halabi told the PIC.
Impossible recovery in Gaza
The Palestinian woman Umm Muhammad al-Najjar, who suffers from colon and breast cancer, explains that receiving treatment inside the Strip has become almost impossible, due to the acute shortage of medicines and medical equipment, demanding an urgent therapeutic transfer outside Gaza to complete chemotherapy and radiation therapy sessions, and prevent the spread of the disease.
Depleted diagnosis and treatment systems
For his part, the medical director of the Gaza Cancer Center, Dr. Muhammad Abu Nada, says that the most prominent challenges facing cancer patients are the systematic destruction of specialized hospitals, topped by the Turkish Friendship Hospital, the Gaza European Hospital, and Abdulaziz al-Rantisi Hospital. This led to the almost complete collapse of the diagnosis and treatment system.
Abu Nada explained that early screening devices, such as mammograms and MRIs, were either destroyed or stopped working due to power outages and fuel shortages, which led to a serious delay in the diagnosis of new cases and the follow-up of old patients.
“Only about 30% of the required quantities of chemotherapy drugs and specialized painkillers are available,” Abu Nada highlighted, pointing to the large shortage of medical cadres after targeting a number of them during the war and the forcibly leaving of others out of the Strip.
According to the latest statistics until the end of December 2025, the number of cancer patients in the Gaza Strip is about 12,500 patients of different age groups, and more than 2,000 new cases are diagnosed annually, including 122 children, according to World Health Organization reports.
The data indicate that about 3,000 patients suffer from significant delays in diagnosis, while only 1,000 patients were able to make an accurate diagnosis due to the lack of medical devices and services.
Since the end of May 2025, intravenous chemotherapy and medical follow-up sessions have almost completely stopped, after specialized hospitals have been out of service, leaving thousands of patients without actual treatment.
Suffocating restrictions on treatment outside Gaza
The Israeli occupation forces impose strict restrictions on the exit of patients for treatment outside Gaza, although about 17,000 patients are in urgent need of medical transfers, only about 1,100 of whom were allowed to leave.
According to medical sources, around 436 cancer patients have died since October 7, 2023, as a result of lack of treatment and inability to access health services, as specialized centers such as the European Gaza Hospital, the Gaza Cancer Center, the Turkish Friendship Hospital, and Abdulaziz al-Rantisi Hospital stopped working.
Dr. Abu Nada affirms the need to rebuild destroyed hospitals, open the crossings urgently, and allow the entry of medicines and medical supplies, stressing that preventing patients from traveling for treatment outside the Strip “represents a form of slow killing.”
“In Gaza, cancer patients do not die because the disease is stronger, but because treatment is prohibited, and time is stolen from their bodies day after day,” Abu Nada concluded.
For his part, the director-general of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Munir al-Bursh, told the PIC that about 22,000 patients have completed all medical and administrative procedures required for travel, including 18,100 patients who have received official approvals, but they are still stuck inside the Gaza Strip without being able to leave the Strip for treatment.
Al-Bursh pointed out that among these, about 5,000 are children and 5,000 are cancer patients, in addition to 7,000 wounded suffering from serious injuries that require specialized therapeutic interventions that are not available locally, warning that the continued ban on them from traveling puts their lives at direct danger.
He stressed that the health sector in Gaza has become largely unable to provide specialized medical care, especially when the continued closure of the Rafah crossing had practically turned such closure into a “slow death sentence” for thousands of patients, considering that every day of delay means the loss of more lives that could have been saved.