The father of 18-year-old Hassan, who says his son was shot in the head in Gaza more than two months ago while looking for food, hopes the reopening of the Rafah crossing will save his life.
"The Rafah border crossing is our salvation - for the patients and for the Gaza Strip," Ibrahim Kulob told Reuters at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where Hassan lies motionless in a bed, his eyes covered by bandages.
“I'm waiting. One day that passes is like a whole year for me.”
The injury caused bleeding in the brain, requiring the removal of a piece of his skull. A subsequent infection led to the loss of vision in his right eye, his father said.
Now, as a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas begins to solidify after two years of war, Hassan is just one of 15.600 patients from Gaza awaiting evacuation, including 3.800 children, according to the World Health Organization.
Many of them, like Hassan, suffer from injuries sustained during the conflict. Others suffer from chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, which the shattered health system can no longer cope with.
Israeli officials announced yesterday that the Rafah crossing, previously used to evacuate patients via Egypt, will reopen for transfers on Sunday.
During the conflict, more than 7.000 patients were evacuated from Gaza, with Egypt receiving more than half of them.
However, the rate of transfers slowed when the Rafah crossing was closed in May 2024 and Israel took control. Since the previous ceasefire collapsed in March, fewer than four patients have left Gaza per day, meaning that it would take more than a decade for the waiting list to be cleared, according to WHO data.
"What we need is for more countries to accept patients from Gaza and for all medical evacuation corridors to be restored," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said this week.
Medical groups and Palestinian health authorities say hundreds of people have already died waiting to be evacuated. The WHO said 740 people on the waiting list had died since July 2024, including 137 children.
One of them was a girl named Jana Ayad, who died in September from severe acute malnutrition, the WHO told Reuters, noting that no country had accepted her.
The coordinator of the Doctors Without Borders project, Hani Islím, said that 19 of their patients who were on the transfer list died during the war, including 12 children.
“Seeing the medical records of those patients, being in direct contact with those children, and then finding out that you lost them because of all those obstacles and hardships - it's really painful,” he said.
For Hassan, the situation is getting worse. His malnutrition is worsening, and he now weighs just 40 kilograms - almost half what he used to, his father said.
"If everything stays like this, it will be too late for him."
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