WHO Raises Alarm Over Gaza Aid Delays

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised concerns over prolonged delays in the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, warning that chronic shortages of medical supplies are further worsening an already dire health situation in the territory.

Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, said on Friday that none of Gaza’s hospitals was fully operational and that the volume of humanitarian aid entering the territory remained insufficient to restore and expand health services.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva from Jerusalem, Van de Weerdt said Israel’s approval process for medical and other humanitarian supplies had become a major obstacle to their delivery.

“Not enough humanitarian aid is entering Gaza, and definitely not enough to allow for a meaningful expansion and restoration of health services,” she told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Jerusalem.

She described the process as lengthy and unpredictable, saying WHO’s latest analysis showed that large quantities of medical supplies awaiting clearance had a median waiting period of 74 days.

When applications are rejected, she said, organisations are required to restart the process.

According to Van de Weerdt, the approval requirements also continue to change, with new regulations introduced periodically.

Israel has said it restricts the entry of items that could have military applications, while accusing Hamas, which carried out the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, of planning further violence.

Van de Weerdt said standard health kits commonly used in other countries had among the lowest approval rates. She added that essential equipment, including X-ray machines, sterilisation equipment and spare parts for CT scanners and other medical machinery, was also regularly rejected.

She cited one shipment containing prosthetics and assistive devices that had been rejected four times within six months.

Medicines, however, were moving through the approval system more easily, with nearly 87 per cent of shipments approved and about one per cent rejected, she said.

Van de Weerdt said the difficulties were not caused by a single obstacle but by multiple layers of delays, each of which could have consequences for patients waiting for treatment.

The WHO called for humanitarian and medical supplies to be allowed into Gaza at scale without obstruction or unpredictable delays, while urging Israel to ease restrictions on medical shipments.

“It’s not one single blockage. It’s a system, layered with delay after delay… and on the other side of every one of these delays is a patient who is waiting,” she said.

“We need the unimpeded and predicable entry of humanitarian and health supplies into Gaza, at scale.

“We hope that Israel will at least release the pressure on medical supplies.”

Van de Weerdt also called for additional crossings into Gaza to be opened and for authorities to publish clear guidance on the procedures and requirements for aid deliveries.

She cautioned against measuring humanitarian access solely by the number of trucks entering Gaza, arguing that the figure did not necessarily indicate whether the population’s health needs were being met.

She said supplies that were not urgently needed, or essential items that arrived after patients needed them, would not adequately address the humanitarian crisis.

The war in Gaza began after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s subsequent military offensive has devastated much of Gaza and killed more than 74,000 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas. The United Nations considers the ministry’s casualty figures reliable.