Feature: Israeli blockade worsens Gaza's medical condition

The suffering, pain and tiredness of Wa'el Erief's family from Gaza has recently mounted, as they could do nothing but watching Wa'el's health condition deteriorating day after day without being able to take him to a hospital abroad for urgent medical treatment.

The eight-year-long Israeli blockade imposed on the impoverished Gaza Strip was basically the major reason that has disabled the Erief family to take the 23-year-old brain cancer patient to a hospital in Israel or abroad for urgent chemotherapy.

The family discovered Wa'el's brain cancer six months ago. Since then, his family has been trying to ensure a proper medical therapy abroad. However, travel restrictions imposed by both Israel and Egypt on the enclave's population were the major obstacle.

"I'm so sad because my health condition deteriorates day after day without having an opportunity to travel abroad for urgent medical treatment. I don't want to travel for fun, I just want to travel for rescuing my life," said the young man, with a tired voice.

Doctors have told the family that it is very difficult for Wa'el to travel long distances because of his sickness. "The doctors told us that it is too late to take me abroad now after they discovered the cancer for six months," Wa'el said.

The Erief family had a previous suffering when the father also died of cancer in 2008 without being able to travel for surgery or for proper medical therapy. Wa'el said that local and foreign physicians told him that he needed urgent medical treatment, but the only thing he can do is to wait.

Israel imposed a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip in 2007 right after the Islamic Hamas movement violently taken control of the enclave. Since then, very few patients can travel to Israel for medical treatments. Egypt has also closed the main border crossing point of Rafah with the Gaza Strip in the past few years.

Gaza Health Ministry said there are hundreds of patients who are waiting for the crossings to open. Otherwise, they will face death due to the severe shortage of medical aid in hospitals and clinics across the coastal enclave.

Ashraf al-Qedra, a Gaza Health Ministry spokesman, told Xinhua that the closure of crossings by both Israel and Egypt "negatively influence patients who are in a bad need for various kinds of medical therapies, mainly cancer and kidney patients."

According to the ministry, about 3,500 Gaza patients are struggling death due to restrictions imposed on their free movement, which is also excluding medical delegations and doctors from the strip.

Palestinian officials in charge of borders and crossings in Gaza have earlier said that there are thousands of Palestinians who cannot travel through Erez crossing with Israel and have to wait to travel through Rafah crossing with Egypt. They are not only patients, but also students, merchants and families who have relatives abroad.

Mayssam Abu Mour, a 25-year-old female student said she is so depressed after she failed to travel to Egypt to continue her higher education in the past couple of years. "I feel myself in a huge prison called Gaza Strip and traveling out of Gaza to anywhere in the world has become for me a dream," she said.

During the past eight years of blockade, Israel has been fully controlling the movement of goods and individuals of the Gaza Strip's 1.8 million population, allowing few humanitarian cases to cross into Israel.

In parallel, Egypt has also keep Rafah border crossing with Gaza closed due to the deteriorated security situation in the Sinai Peninsula. Since the beginning of this year, Rafah crossing has opened for only 14 days, according to the authorities in Gaza.

"With the ongoing siege, Gaza had turned into a devastated area with expectation of a huge humanitarian crisis that may explode at anytime," Adnan Abu Amer, a political science professor at al-Ummah University in Gaza, warned. "Life in general was damaged, besides a deteriorating economy and more pain and suffering." Endit