Gaza’s largest hospital forced to end dialysis services amid fuel crisis
A patient receives treatment at al-Shifa hospital’s dialysis centre in Gaza City on 11 June 2024
Maha Hussaini reports in Middle East Eye on 1 July 2025:
At least 350 kidney failure patients in Gaza face imminent death as the Strip’s largest medical complex announced a halt to dialysis sessions due to fuel shortages.
On Tuesday morning, the head of al-Shifa Complex in Gaza City announced that the dialysis ward would completely shut down by noon, as fuel needed to operate the generators had run out.
“This is happening for the first time since the beginning of the war on Gaza,” Dr Muhammad Abu Hassira, a specialist in internal medicine and nephrology at al-Shifa Medical Complex, told Middle East Eye.
“During the worst periods of the war, the dialysis unit was forced to suspend operations multiple times for several days due to Israeli raids on the hospital. Today, the hospital is still partially functioning, but we simply cannot run the dialysis machines because there is no fuel.”
Dr Abu Hassira confirmed that the dialysis ward had completely shut down earlier in the day, with the small amount of remaining fuel running a single generator reserved exclusively for the intensive care unit. “Kidney failure patients came today, and we painfully had to ask them to go back home. This has very serious repercussions on their health,” he added.
On 19 June, United Nations agencies warned that vital services are “hours away” from shutting down. “We are really – unless the situation changes – hours away from a catastrophic decline and a shutdown of more facilities if no fuel enters or more fuel isn’t retrieved immediately,” Olga Cherevko from the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, said in a statement.