Cancer patients in Gaza are struggling to get timely care as oncology services, medicines, and pathways to treatment outside the territory remain severely limited, according to accounts from doctors, humanitarian groups, and the World Health Organization.
Doctors and aid groups describe a situation where chemotherapy and radiotherapy are largely unavailable, patients wait for referrals or evacuation, and some die while still on waiting lists for care that cannot be provided locally.
Cancer care breaks down in Gaza
A Gaza resident named Hani Naim, who has lived with cancer for six years, is described as now unable to leave for care, even though he previously received treatment outside Gaza. Doctors quoted in the same account say Gaza’s healthcare system has effectively collapsed since the war began and that cancer-related deaths have risen sharply.
Specialized cancer services have also been hit by the destruction of key facilities, including the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, described as Gaza’s only specialized oncology center. Medical teams are described as working in makeshift settings without essential diagnostic tools and drugs, while even palliative care is limited and painkillers are rationed for the most critical cases.
In Khan Younis, doctors are reported as saying several cancer patients die each day. The same reporting says thousands of patients have approvals for treatment abroad but still cannot cross borders to reach that care.
Medical evacuation backlog and deaths
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says that after more than two years of violence in Gaza and the decimation of the health system by Israeli forces, thousands of people need medical care no longer available in the Strip. MSF says more than 18,500 Palestinians are awaiting medical evacuation from Gaza, and more than 1 in 5 of those waiting are children.
MSF says only a small portion of those needing evacuation have been able to leave, and that critical cases are delayed or denied, sometimes with fatal consequences. MSF reports that at least 1,000 patients have died while awaiting medical evacuation, citing the Ministry of Health, and says one MSF colleague, Abed El Hameed Qaradaya, died while awaiting clearance for surgery that MSF says could have saved his life.
MSF says it has managed to evacuate a small number of patients for specialized, lifesaving care, including to its reconstructive surgery hospital in Amman, Jordan, but describes this as far from enough compared with the scale of need. MSF also presents personal accounts from people who say they are waiting for referrals or clearance to travel, including one person who says a family member is a cancer patient who is also waiting to be evacuated.
How permit delays affect patients
A World Health Organization (WHO) feature from 2019 says that after a cancer diagnosis, patients in Gaza may wait for months to receive treatment, and that the process of getting permits to access care outside Gaza can be stressful and unpredictable. WHO says many patients apply multiple times to exit, and some never obtain the permits needed to reach care.
WHO says Gaza hospitals’ ability to diagnose and treat cancer is severely limited by chronic medicine shortages and a lack of medical equipment, and lists nuclear medicine scanning for staging cancers, radiotherapy equipment, and some specialized surgeries as unavailable. WHO also says that more than half of essential chemotherapy drugs were at less than a month’s supply throughout 2018.
WHO reports that in 2018, 39% of patient applications for permits to exit Gaza for health care were unsuccessful. In one example, WHO describes a 64-year-old patient named Samira, diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2016, who needed radiotherapy in East Jerusalem and took more than six months and five permit applications before exiting Gaza in June 2018, and WHO quotes her asking why she was denied a permit while suffering.
WHO also describes a 32-year-old mother named Khadijah who applied in January 2018 to travel to Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem for a specialized investigation, was denied, later reapplied in July and was denied again, then changed her destination to Egypt, where her second attempt to leave was successful and she had surgery in August 2018, seven months after diagnosis.
Mortality, infrastructure, and calls for action
A letter published in the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal in 2025 describes Gaza as facing a severe medical and public health crisis during the ongoing conflict and highlights cancer patients as among the most vulnerable because access to lifesaving treatments is restricted.
The same letter says there are approximately 10,000 cancer cases in Gaza and that more than 2,000 people, including 122 children, are diagnosed with cancer each year there. It also says the blockade and restrictions on movement imposed by Israel have limited access to chemotherapy drugs, radiotherapy equipment, and diagnostic tools, and argues that these constraints contribute to delays in diagnosis and treatment and to poor outcomes and high mortality.
The letter adds that power outages and fuel shortages disrupt treatment schedules and compromise patient care, and it also describes significant psychosocial distress among cancer patients linked to conflict-related experiences, while noting that mental health resources are scarce. It calls for urgent international attention and urges actions including unblocking Gaza and removing movement restrictions to ensure access to essential medical supplies and services, strengthening health infrastructure with equipment, medicines, and trained personnel, supporting reliable internet connections for telemedicine, and expanding psychosocial programs.
MSF, meanwhile, calls on Israeli authorities to facilitate medical evacuations for all patients who need them and says evacuees should be able to travel with at least one caregiver. MSF also calls on more countries to accept medical evacuees, stating that Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Türkiye, and Jordan have taken on a share of the responsibility while other countries have accepted very few patients, if any.
