The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza has warned that all the government hospitals in the besieged coastal territory will fail soon to provide emergency and scheduled surgical operations due to the acute shortage of nitrous oxide which is used as an anesthetic.
Mahmoud Hammad director of the ministry’s administrative affairs said on Wednesday that the available amounts of nitrous oxide would run out in the next 10 days.
Hammad added that his ministry contacted many international organizations including the World Health Organization to supply Gaza with the anesthetic gas but Israel refuses to respond to international requests in this regard.
“The health ministry’s facilities (hospitals) need 120 nitrous oxide cylinders per month” the health official said.
He appealed to the international community to urgently intervene to pressure the Israeli government to allow shipments of nitrous oxide to enter Gaza in order to enable hospitals to continue saving lives of patients.
