More than 1,000 patients have died awaiting evacuation from Gaza since July 2024

More than 1,000 patients have died while waiting for urgent medical evacuation from war-ravaged Gaza in the last year and a half, the World Health Organization said Friday.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that the UN agency and its partners had "evacuated over 10,600 patients from Gaza with severe health conditions, including over 5,600 children" since the start of the war more than two years ago.

But he warned that "many more patients remain in Gaza awaiting evacuation to receive appropriate healthcare".

Citing numbers from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, Tedros said that 1,092 patients were known to have died while awaiting medical evacuation just between July 2024 and November 28, 2025.

"This figure is likely under-reported," he warned, calling on "more countries to open doors to patients from Gaza, and for medical evacuation to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to be restored".

"Lives depend on it."

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WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva on Friday that some 18,500 patients were still in need of treatment outside Gaza, including more than 4,000 children.

A Doctors Without Borders official told AFP earlier this month that the WHO figures refer only to registered patients, and that the actual number of people in need of urgent evacuation was several times higher. 

"Many of these people don't have time to wait," Jasarevic stressed.

Up to December 1, more than 30 countries had taken patients from Gaza, but only a handful, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, had accepted large numbers. 

A US-sponsored ceasefire has halted fighting in Gaza, which began after Hamas's deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

But the deal, in effect since October 10, remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of violations.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)