Nuseirat, Gaza – Fifty-year-old Murad Haji sits in silence in a dentist’s chair among the rubble of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, hoping to find some relief from a pain that has plagued him for months.He holds his jaw, overwhelmed by a sharp throbbing ache. He had been given a quote of about 400 shekels ($142) for treatment – an amount that could feed his children for four or five days due to escalating food costs. But when the agonising pain spread from his tooth to his jaw, Haji was forced back to the dentist’s clinic to seek some relief.“I can no longer bear the pain… but I knew treatment was more expensive than I could afford,” he says. “Four hundred shekels is a lot… My children need it more.”His dentist, Liza Hassouna, explains how the Israeli siege on Gaza has led to severe shortages of dental materials, significantly driving up the price of treatment and meaning that surgeries can only work on teeth at vastly inflated prices.“Many patients come to us only after the infection has significantly worsened because they could not afford treatment earlier,” Hassouna says. “By then, what could have been a simple procedure becomes far more complicated, painful, and expensive.”Haji is one of many Pale …
