LONDON: The West Bank’s health system is being pushed toward a collapse comparable to Gaza’s, not by airstrikes but by financial pressure and restrictions on movement, the head of a US-based medical aid group said on Thursday.
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and CEO of MedGlobal, told Arab News that the mechanisms differed from those that devastated Gaza’s hospitals and clinics but the outcome for patients could be similar.
“Gaza’s health system was largely dismantled through direct bombing, restrictions on medical supplies and fuel, and the effects of siege and displacement,” he said.
“The West Bank trajectory is different in form but convergent in effect: chronic fiscal strangulation combined with movement restrictions and operational interference.”
His comments followed a statement by the rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which said that 447 of the Palestinian Health Ministry’s 590 service branches had sharply reduced operations and were open only once or twice a week.
