MAPW has joined Israeli and Palestinian colleagues to endorse a proposal from Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) on medical evacuations.
The health system in Gaza has been decimated by Israeli attacks, and health needs are only increasing. More than 25,000 individuals urgently require life-saving medical care, according to the MoH in Gaza, with 15,600 medical evacuation requests submitted to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Evacuations provide lifesaving treatment to those who cannot access care within Gaza and help reduce the overwhelming burden on the local healthcare system, which is unable to cope with the scale of injuries and illnesses.
However, medical evacuations, while vital, are not a sustainable solution.
Only a tiny fraction of evacuation requests are approved, and even then patients, including children, must be evacuated without family members, and with no guarantee of return.
A crucial step toward addressing Gaza’s healthcare crisis is reopening a safe humanitarian corridor to hospitals in East Jerusalem. These six referral hospitals are not just vital to the region-they represent a unified Palestinian healthcare system.
Providing specialised tertiary care, including cancer treatments and paediatric oncology, these facilities offer services largely unavailable in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Before October 2023, hospitals like Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) served as a critical lifeline, with over 30% of patients referred from Gaza.
MAPW joins PHRI, Children not Numbers, Juzoor, Medico International, MedGlobal, Lutheran World Federation and Healthworkers for Palestine in endorsing the following key steps to alleviating the health crisis in Gaza:
- Implement a ceasefire and halt attacks on healthcare workers and facilities, including ambulances, especially those on the front lines of health service delivery, including the immediate release of healthcare workers detained during the conflict.
- Establish a clear and permanent medical evacuation system while ensuring patients’ right to return to the Gaza Strip after treatment.
- Establish safe corridors for the medical evacuation of critically ill patients to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, alongside humanitarian corridors for safe passage from northern Gaza to the south.
- End family separations during medical evacuations and while traveling internally in Gaza, ensuring no sick or wounded child is separated from their loved ones.
- Ensure the safe return of Palestinians who have left Gaza, allowing them to seek medical care without being forced to choose between their lives and their homeland.