The Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip on Saturday condemned the humanitarian organizations’ continued neglect of Gaza hospitals’ urgent need for fuel.
The Ministry warned of “imminent paralysis” in the health sector due to the worsening crisis.
Spokesman for the Ministry of Health Ashraf al-Qedra said in a press statement that the current situation requires an immediate and responsible action by humanitarian organizations to save the lives of hundreds of patients and children.
“The fuel grant supervised by the UN ended in November 2018 and no other grant has been allocated to the hospitals yet” al-Qedra said.
Al-Qedra pointed out that the Ministry of Health has taken tough austerity measures to manage the acute fuel shortage mainly through the use of small power generators and rescheduled services. However the crisis is worsening and soon these measures will become useless he added.
He added that Gaza health facilities now need 300000 liters of diesel per month instead of the usual 540000 liters in view of the improvement witnessed in the electricity distribution schedule recently thanks to the Qatari fuel grant.
“With every additional hour of power outage we need about 2000 liters of fuel to ensure the continuation of our health services” the Ministry of Health said.
The Ministry praised the fuel aid offered by the Turkish foundation IHH Advocacy Committee in Jordan and some local gas stations to several health facilities in Gaza.
It stressed that individual initiatives are highly appreciated but unfortunately they are not enough.
Five Gaza major hospitals a few days ago closed their doors following the depletion of the fuel used to run alternative generators during power outages.
