"Year of Nursing" 500 martyrs of medical personnel in Gaza and 1,500 wounded since October 7

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced, on Sunday, the death of 500 medical personnel, including 138 nurses, as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Strip since October 7, 2023.

Ministry spokesman Khalil Al-Dakran said in a press conference on the sidelines of a protest carried out by nurses at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on the occasion of International Nurses Day, which falls on May 12 of every year since its approval in 1974.

Al-Dakran said: “Here in Palestine and in Gaza in particular, we are witnessing this day when the Israeli occupation has killed 138 male and female nurses. International Nurses Day this year is exceptional, and we have the right to call this year the Year of Nursing.”

He added that this year, "the Palestinian people were subjected to a war of extermination, displacement, starvation, arrest, and mass massacres that resulted in more than 40,000 martyrs and missing persons, and more than 70,000 wounded."

He continued: “Nurses, midwives, and medical staff are an integral part of the fabric of the Palestinian people. They were the guerrillas who played their national and humanitarian role to save the lives of the wounded and sick, and they fulfilled their oath of the profession in a year in which records were broken for the number of people to whom treatment was provided in a circumstance when the nurse was a martyr, wounded, or Displaced in tents or detained in racist Israeli prisons, where the number of medical teams reached 500 martyrs, 1,500 wounded, and 312 detainees.

He stated that "during more than 7 months of war, medical teams had to follow up on the victims in an exceptional effort in a situation in which the health system collapsed, as the occupation destroyed 33 hospitals, 53 health centers, 133 ambulances, and a shortage of medicines and medical supplies."

Al-Dakran, on behalf of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, called on “the international community and free people of the world to protect medical personnel and health institutions and criminalize attacks against them.”

He also called on "unions, international institutions and the World Health Organization to send medical and nursing teams to support health teams in Gaza."

He also renewed his demand that “the international community must exert pressure to open the crossings, send medical aid in the form of medicines, equipment and fuel, and refer cases for treatment abroad to save the health system in the Gaza Strip.”

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, causing tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and leaving behind widespread devastation, health and environmental disasters, and humanitarian crises, according to Palestinian and international sources.