The World Health Organization briefing said Gaza’s health system is “being systematically dismantled” after 14 months of fighting, with only 16 of 36 hospitals in the territory partially functional and a total bed capacity of about 1,822, the WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory said.

The WHO representative told meeting participants that approximately 7% of Gaza’s population has been killed or injured since October 2023 and that more than 105,000 people have been wounded. The representative said over 25% of those injured will have life-changing injuries requiring extensive rehabilitation and long-term assistive technologies.

“Time and again hospitals have become battlegrounds rendering them out of services and depriving those in need of life saving care,” the representative said, describing severe shortages of medical supplies, equipment and specialized staff. The briefing said hospitals can generally provide only basic care and lack capacity to treat chronic disease and complex injuries.

WHO reported that since October 2023 a total of 5,383 patients were evacuated abroad for medical treatment with WHO support; of those, 436 were evacuated after the closure of a crossing on May 6, 2024. The briefing said more than 12,000 people still require medical evacuation and that at the current pace it could take five to 10 years to evacuate all patients in urgent need.

The representative said access and logistics are a major constraint: in 2024 only 111 of 279 WHO missions into Gaza (about 40%) were facilitated, which has directly affected the organization’s ability to resupply hospitals, transfer critical patients and deploy emergency medical teams.

The briefing said WHO has verified 654 attacks on health-care facilities in Gaza since October 2023, resulting in 886 fatalities and 13,149 injuries (figures as reported by WHO). The representative said North Gaza — described in the briefing as under siege for about 90 days — is particularly hard hit: many primary health-care facilities there are not functioning and only one hospital in the area remained minimally functional at the time of the briefing.

The representative reported that Kamalat 1 hospital (identified in the briefing as the main hospital in North Gaza) was put out of service following a raid, that a hospital site was emptied on Dec. 27 and that parts of the facility were burned and severely damaged. The briefing said WHO has lost contact with Dr. Husama Busatia, identified in the briefing as director of Kamalat 1, and called for his immediate release.

At Indonesian Hospital the briefing said staff and patients were ordered to evacuate and that the facility lacks the equipment and supplies to offer adequate care. The representative said Al-Ara (described in the briefing as the last minimally functional hospital in North Gaza) was running critically low on medicines, food, water and fuel and reported that its remaining inpatient count was small.

WHO urged expedited medical evacuations using all possible corridors, including to the West Bank and East Jerusalem; increased flow of humanitarian aid and supplies across Gaza; facilitation of access to damaged hospitals to assess and transfer usable equipment; and “an urgent and lasting ceasefire,” the representative said. The briefing also reiterated that “hospitals have a special protection under international humanitarian law because of their life saving functions.”

The briefing concluded by noting that, despite extreme constraints and repeated attacks, health workers, WHO and partners had kept some services running and restored portions of major health facilities elsewhere in Gaza, which the representative said demonstrated what is possible if health care is protected and sustained access is granted.