In early March 2020, I was privileged to join a ten-person medical delegation to Gaza organized by the Washington state chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Several among our group have long histories and deep personal ties with Gaza, which has been subjected to a harsh Israeli blockade for fourteen years. The staff of our host organization, the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, worked tirelessly to tailor our daily schedules to our specialties and interests. We were provided with personal interpreters and transportation. In my capacity as a medical physicist, I visited six hospitals, where I left behind textbooks and electronic files of my medical imaging teaching materials. I met and spoke with hospital administrators, medical directors, radiologists, radiology technologists, and other medical professionals.
Dr. Mahu Ayyad is Medical Director of the Ahli Arab hospital, which is supported by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. He explained: the five-year survival for a newly-diagnosed breast cancer patient in Gaza is 50%. In Israel, just a few miles away, the five-year survival is 85%. There is no radiotherapy in Gaza. Chemotherapy is in short supply, creating conditions in which a patient is often unable to complete a full course of treatment. Appeals to cross the checkpoint to receive care in Israel or the West Bank are routinely delayed or simply denied. These patients suffer and die. I wonder, Israel, how is this anything other than depraved indifference to human life? What possible security do you realize by denying a breast cancer patient the standard of care for her disease?
Radiologists at the Nasser Hospital described the many difficulties they face. There are no radiation dosimeters in Gaza and thus no means to measure radiation exposure of patients and radiology personnel. There is no nuclear medicine in Gaza and no tests based on radioactive tracers. Israel, you would not allow even one of your technologists to participate in a fluoroscopy procedure without wearing a proper, calibrated dosimeter. Of course, you know that the isotopes used in nuclear medicine cannot be fabricated into weapons. With no scientific rationale to support your blockade of these medical necessities, what sense are we to make of it?