Over 1,000 patients died awaiting evacuation from Gaza: WHO

GENEVA

Medics evacuate injured people and cancer patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on Oct. 28, 2024, to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in a joint World Health Organization and Palestinian Red Crescent initiative.

More than 1,000 patients have died while waiting for urgent medical evacuation from war-ravaged Gaza in the last year and a half, the World Health Organization said on Dec. 19.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that the U.N. agency and its partners had "evacuated over 10,600 patients from Gaza with severe health conditions, including over 5,600 children" since the start of the war more than two years ago.

But he warned that "many more patients remain in Gaza awaiting evacuation to receive appropriate health care.”

Citing numbers from the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, Tedros said that 1,092 patients were known to have died while awaiting medical evacuation just between July 2024 and Nov. 28, 2025.

"This figure is likely underreported," he warned, calling on "more countries to open doors to patients from Gaza, and for medical evacuation to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to be restored.”

The WHO has previously estimated that more than 16,500 patients still need treatment outside of Gaza, while a top official with the charity Doctors Without Borders told AFP earlier this month the actual number was likely "three to four times that number.”

Up to Dec. 1, over 30 countries had taken patients from Gaza, but only a handful, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, had accepted large numbers.

A U.S.-sponsored ceasefire has halted fighting in Gaza, which began after Hamas's deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.