Repeated delays in delivering life-saving medicines, prosthetics, and basic clinical hardware into Gaza risk causing devastating consequences for vulnerable patients, the World Health Organization warned on Friday. Reinhilde Van De Weerdt, the global agency’s representative in Palestine, formally urged Israeli authorities to lift restrictions on incoming medical consignments. Clearance procedures continue to slow supplies while frontline clinics run low on vital trauma and rehabilitation equipment.
One shipment of prosthetics was rejected four times in six months.
Currently, approved cargo can enter southern Gaza only through the Kerem Shalom border post. The adjacent Rafah terminal remains restricted to limited passenger transit, including medical evacuees requiring treatment abroad. Meanwhile, four other border passages—Kissufim, Gate 96, Erez, and Erez West—remain closed under direct Israeli military control.
Van De Weerdt emphasized that a truck packed with non-priority goods, or vital equipment arriving too late, fails to preserve human lives. She noted that essential medicines must not face scrutiny under dual-use classifications, given that standard healthcare supplies remain globally recognized requirements for running clinical facilities. While general pharmaceutical shipments have maintained an approval rate of approximately 87 percent with rejections slightly above one percent, mobility and rehabilitation devices have encountered repeated procedural blockades.
Frontline medical personnel continue to treat patients despite acute shortages of diagnostic tools, sterile consumables, and surgical equipment. The health agency reiterated its call for a multi-crossing logistics arrangement to prevent humanitarian shipments from funneling through single bottlenecks. Unimpeded and predictable entry of humanitarian cargo at scale remains the only operational framework capable of preventing further institutional collapse across the territory.
