Brussels wants EU countries to echo the request launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) and accept the most serious patients from Gaza who have been left without the possibility of treatment due to the destruction of the health system. during the Israeli offensive of the last seven months. Commissioners for Health, Stella Kyriakides, and for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, have written to EU health and civil protection officials asking them to “indicate their willingness to accept patients from Gaza” with the greatest possible urgency.
“It is crucial that we act quickly to ensure the safe evacuation of these patients to hospitals outside Gaza where they can receive the life-saving treatment they so desperately need,” the commissioners emphasize in the letter to the authorities of the 27 Member States. The request also extends to the other ten countries that participate in the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), the body created by Brussels in 2001 to improve the prevention and coordinated response to disasters (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iceland, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine).
In the letter, advanced by the Financial Times and that Morning Express has been able to consult, the commissioners recall that the WHO has asked the MPCU for help, indicating that there are more than 9,000 patients from Gaza who require medical evacuation. Many of them are women and children suffering from serious injuries, as well as other patients with chronic diseases that require immediate treatment. European countries already have a first list of 109 “seriously injured and sick” pediatric patients who require urgent help, they add.
Gaza had 36 hospitals before the start of the Israeli offensive in response to the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. As indicated at the end of March by the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, with most of the hospitals completely destroyed or severely damaged, “some 9,000 patients need to be urgently evacuated abroad to receive life-saving medical care, including treatments for cancer, bombing wounds, dialysis and other chronic illnesses.”
The commissioners recognize the complexity of an operation of this type, but recall that “great experience” has already been acquired through medical evacuation operations carried out in Ukraine. “We encourage countries to take advantage of this experience to support the most vulnerable in Gaza,” they add, convinced, they say, that the difficulties can be overcome with a “collective European effort.”
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The letter from the commissioners was known on the same day that the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, urged Israel on behalf of the Twenty-Seven to end “immediately” its military operation in Rafah, which exposes the Gazan population to “further internal displacement, famine and human suffering.”
“The EU calls on Israel to refrain from further exacerbating the already urgent humanitarian situation in Gaza and to reopen the Rafah entry point,” Borrell said in a statement, in which he recalled that according to international humanitarian law , “Israel must allow and facilitate the unhindered passage of humanitarian aid for civilians”, something that, he recalled, “the International Court of Justice made clear” in January and March.
“If Israel continues its military operation in Rafah, it will put the EU’s relationship with Israel under serious pressure,” warned the head of European diplomacy, who has once again urged all parties to “redouble their efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire and the unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas.”
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