Patients in Gaza dying of acute medical shortage

Residents in the Gaza Strip are facing a human disaster due to an acute shortage of medicine and other medical items.According to FNA dispatches, since the start of the Israeli blockade on the strip in 2007, hospitals and medical centers have always been short of various types of medicines, medical tools, equipments, fund and power supply. These shortages have severely endangered the health and lives of the patients in the Gaza city and other towns in the besieged strip. Meantime, Bassem Naeem, the health minister of the Palestinian Elected Government in the Gaza Strip, said that his ministry is in real crisis and lacks the necessary budget for providing health services. He added that he has tried to raise the issue with authorities in the Arab and Islamic states, but his words showed that those talks have yielded only meager results. Saeed Salah, the manager of Abdolaziz Al-Rentisi Hospital for Children in the Gaza Strip also cautioned about the devastating consequences of the chronic shortage of drugs for the lives of patients. The siege of Gaza started in June 2007 when Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip. This was supported by the governments of Egypt and the US. The blockade consists of a land blockade along Gaza's borders with Egypt and Israel and a sea blockade. It immediately followed the 2006-2007 economic sanctions against the Palestinian National Authority following the election of Hamas to the Palestinian government. Israel is preventing humanitarian, media or medical delegations and medical aid deliveries from entering the coastal Strip. The blockade has attracted criticism from many Human Rights organizations. September 2009 UN fact-finding mission found that the blockade of Gaza "amounted to collective punishment" was likely a war crime and a crime against humanity and recommended that the matter be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).