The Palestinian health ministry announced that the hospitals in the Gaza Strip suffer from an acute shortage of medicines and essential medical consumables, describing it as “the most difficult crisis during the years of the Israeli blockade”. RNA - Spokesman for the health ministry Ashraf al-Qudra stated on Tuesday that the ministry’s annual needs of medical supplies are worth $40 million, but it received during the first half of the current year only a $10 million worth of medicines and medical consumables from different parties, Palinfo reported.
Qudra added that the failure to meet the needs of patients deprived 50 percent of them of receiving medical treatment, urging the concerned parties and donors to urgently provide Gaza with its needs of medical supplies.
The Great March of Return was launched in late March 2018 in an effort to shed light on the Palestinian refugees' right of return and pressure Israel to lift the 13-year-long blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Since the start of the border protests, the Israeli occupation army has killed more than 310 Palestinians and injured over 31,000 in the Gaza Strip.
A UN fact-finding mission has announced that Israeli forces committed rights violations during their crackdown against Palestinian demonstrators in the Gaza Strip last year that may amount to “war crimes”, urging the regime’s military to prevent its snipers from using lethal force against the demonstrators.
The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory presented its full report in mid-May, saying Israeli forces breached international human rights by using live ammunition against unarmed Palestinian protesters during the anti-Israel demonstrations in Gaza
The UN has warned that 1,700 Gazans shot by Israel Defense Forces at protests may need amputations in the next two years because of a lack of healthcare funding to help them recover.
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