For Hani Naim, the wait is not for a cure, but for permission to save his own life.Living with cancer for six years, Naim had been approved for treatment abroad. But like thousands of others, he remains trapped in Gaza, barred from leaving by tightening Israeli restrictions.“I used to receive treatment in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Naim told Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum. “Today, I cannot access any treatment at all. I need radiotherapy, and it no longer exists in Gaza.”Naim is one of 11,000 cancer patients currently stranded in the enclave, where the healthcare system has collapsed entirely.According to doctors, the number of cancer-related deaths has tripled since the October 2023 start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. With no chemotherapy, no radiotherapy, and no way out, a cancer diagnosis has become, for many, an immediate death sentence.A ‘ghost hospital’The epicentre of this crisis is the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. Once the sole facility providing specialised oncology care in the Gaza Strip, it now stands as a hollowed-out shell.“It resembles a ghost hospital after being turned into a military site during the war,” Abu Azzoum reported. “Israeli forces blew it up, leaving patients to fend for themselves.”With the main facility destroyed, doctors have been forced into makeshift clinics with zero …
