“Access to Oxygen Is Not a Medical Luxury”: With No Spare Parts Allowed In, Gaza’s Hospital Equipment Is Collapsing

Drop Site is a reader-funded, independent news outlet. Without your support, we can’t operate. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation today. GAZA CITY—Hanan Al-Ajab lay on a gurney in the oncology department of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, barely clinging to life—her mouth agape, her eyes shut. Her daughter, Fatma Al-Ajab, held up a nasal cannula, the end of the plastic tube dangling in the air and unattached. “There is no oxygen cylinder,” Al-Ajab told Drop Site News in distress. “There is nothing. Nothing is available. Most things are unavailable. The staff have done everything they can, God bless them, and they are working with whatever they have. But when there is a shortage of oxygen, everything deteriorates.” “My mother has become a skeleton,” she said pointing to her mother’s emaciated body. Hanan, 63, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer several months ago. She is one of an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 cancer patients in Gaza who depend on access to specialized healthcare, according to the UN. Yet critical shortages in chemotherapy agents and other lifesaving medicines, as well as a lack of properly functioning medical equipment, have left her unable to receive proper care. Israel has continued to heavily restrict humanitarian aid and life essentials from entering Gaza—in blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement that went into effect on October 10, 2025. “She reaches the point where she is suffocating and dying,” Al-Ajab said. “Look at her—do you see how her mouth is wide open? Look at the tube. She doesn’t have what she needs. She is supposed to be receiving oxygen continuously. Her blood levels drop, everything drops. All of her bodily functions deteriorate at once because there is no oxygen and she can’t breathe.” In adjacent rooms and hallways, other patients lay prone on hospital beds wearing oxygen masks and nasal cannulas—some attached to oxygen cylinders, others not, and all of them struggling to breathe. Scenes inside the oxygen filling station and the oncology department at Al-Shifa Hospital. August 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah. Last week, Gaza’s Ministry of Health issued an urgent appeal, warning that the few functional oxygen plants in the enclave were operating beyond their maximum capacity and frequently breaking down. The ministry called for the immediate opening of crossings to allow for the importing of spare parts and technical equipment necessary for maintenance, as well as the emergency supply of new plants. “Access to oxygen is not a medical luxury, it is a lifeline for many vital and life-saving departments,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. “Before the war, we had 34 oxygen generation plants. The occupation put 22 of them out of service,” Mazen Al-Aryashi, the head of the Engineering Department at the Ministry of Health, told Drop Site. He stood inside the oxygen filling station in Al-Shifa Hospital—a mess of rusted cylinders and dusty machines surrounded by destroyed equipment piled in a corner. “The 12 remaining plants urgently need routine and emergency maintenance to ensure they continue operating properly and can supply ministry facilities with the oxygen needed to keep critical departments running—particularly neonatal units, intensive care units, operating rooms, and inpatient wards.” “Before the war, we had 30 filling units. Now, only four are available to serve all of these needs,” Al-Aryashi continued. “If any one of these plants breaks down, God forbid, it would mean shutting down numerous departments in a hospital. If a central oxygen plant stops operating, it would effectively be a death sentence for patients.” Since the war began in October 2023, Gaza’s health care system has come under sustained assault by the Israeli military. Hospitals, clinics, and medical centers were systematically bombed and raided, while doctors and health care workers killed and imprisoned. A suffocating siege on supplies caused severe shortages of not only medicine but also parts to repair and restore critical equipment. Little has changed since a so-called “ceasefire” went into effect nearly a year ago. “The healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has experienced systemic collapse,” UNRWA said in a report earlier this month. “The healthcare services in the Gaza Strip have been degraded at every level, from primary healthcare and specialist treatment to disease surveillance, maternal care, emergency response, and medical referral systems…. Despite the ceasefire, no health facility in the Gaza Strip has been rehabilitated to full functionality, while the healthcare system remains severely strained by shortages of personnel, medicines, medical supplies, and fuel.” Along with Israel’s near-daily bombing, shelling, and shooting attacks in Gaza, the report stresses the continuing blockade as a primary cause for the collapse of medical infrastructure. “Continued restrictions on the entry of humanitarian assistance, essential medicines, medical equipment, and construction materials needed to sustain and expand essential health services as well as rebuild destroyed healthcare facilities and infrastructure, have prevented much of the sector from being rehabilitated,” the UNRWA report said. “As of June 2026, WHO reported that the principal barriers to health facilities being rehabilitated in the Gaza Strip were a lack of medical equipment, affecting 97% of facilities, and shortages of medicines, affecting over 80% of facilities.” In the face of crumbling medical equipment, teams of engineers in Gaza have resorted to salvaging parts from damaged machinery and refitting them in a desperate attempt to repair what they can and restore some functionality to various medical devices, including critical diagnostic equipment. Inside Al-Shifa Hospital, the walls of the medical equipment maintenance room are lined with open shelves stacked with disassembled medical devices, soldering irons, circuit boards, and tangles of wires. “In the past, spare parts were supplied as equipment broke down. Currently, that option is no longer available to us because of the situation in Gaza,” Ahmed Younis, an engineer at Al-Shifa Hospital told Drop Site. “We now collect equipment damaged during the [Israeli] ground incursion and the bombing of the hospital. We collect them, dismantle matching equipment of the same type, salvage and repair the parts, and then reassemble the equipment. We have managed to restore only around 15% of the hospital’s equipment. Most of the equipment needs to be replaced and is difficult to repair under the current conditions.” Inside the medical equipment maintenance room at Al-Shifa hospital where engineers try to repair what they can with salvaged parts. August 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah. Once the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip, accounting for nearly a third of the entire territory’s healthcare and medical capacity, Al-Shifa hospital is now a bombed-out, charred shell following successive Israeli raids. Younis said most of the equipment at the hospital—diagnostic devices, laboratory equipment, X-ray machines, echocardiography machines, and ultrasound machines—have been refurbished in this way. “But the equipment is not operating at the level of efficiency it is supposed to,” he warned. “The MRI machines and other radiology equipment, such as CT scanners and lithotripsy machines, were completely destroyed. Not a single one is currently operational at Al-Shifa hospital. There are no CT scanners, no MRI machines, no catheterization machine, and no other radiology equipment.” The lack of functional diagnostic equipment has severely impaired doctors’ abilities to treat patients in Gaza. “Most of the equipment was lost as a result of the destruction and fires caused by the war and the bombardment of Al-Shifa medical complex,” Dr. Mohammed Amin Matar, the head of the radiology department at Al-Shifa and a specialist in diagnostic and interventional radiology, told Drop Site. “This has severely affected our ability to diagnose patients and manage medical cases. Diagnosis is the first step in treating a patient. Without a diagnosis, patients cannot receive proper treatment. In many cases, patients need an MRI for diagnosis, but it is not available. They also need other advanced tests that are completely unavailable now, although they were available before the war. We no longer have these capabilities. This has resulted in severe complications and, in some cases, patients have lost their lives because we were unable to determine the correct diagnosis.” The destruction of medical facilities and the steady deterioration of equipment that remained comes as Israel continues to bomb Gaza on a routine basis, including targeting civilian infrastructure. On Monday alone, the Israeli military struck a water desalination plant in Gaza City and destroyed a warehouse in Deir al-Balah belonging to Ard El Insan, a local humanitarian organization working in partnership with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). The warehouse stored nutrition supplies intended for children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers in Gaza. “The loss of these supplies comes at a time when nutritional needs in Gaza remain severe,” MAP said in a statement. “A new UNICEF report this week has shown there are concerning rates of maternal and chronic malnutrition in Gaza and that humanitarian aid is vital to prevent further deterioration of people’s conditions.” Gaza’s healthcare system is still reeling from nearly three years of attacks targeting medical personnel and infrastructure. As of June, the World Health Organization (WHO) documented 971 attacks on healthcare in Gaza, affecting at least 804 health facilities, including hospitals and clinics, and 268 ambulances. More than 1,700 health workers have been killed or injured, according to WHO, while hundreds of others have been arrested and imprisoned. Meanwhile, the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza has declined throughout 2026 in an ongoing violation of the so-called ceasefire. “Between March and May 2026, over 42% of planned aid delivery missions to the Gaza Strip were cancelled or impeded by the Israeli authorities, the majority involving critical medical, water, and sanitation supplies,” the August UNRWA report found. “During the same period, the volume of aid entering the Gaza Strip fell by over 43% compared with the first three months of the ceasefire. Of the total aid entering, only around 1.2% included medicines and health supplies.” In parallel with the decimation of Gaza’s health care system, Israel is continuing to severely restrict the number of Palestinians allowed out of Gaza to seek treatment abroad. Some 300 Palestinians have died waiting for medical evacuations since the “ceasefire” went into effect, according to the Health Ministry, with 20,000 patients waiting for authorization and only around 2,000 being allowed to cross so far. Raed Al-Hagag, 59, has been suffering from heart problems for over a decade and has required surgery to insert stents several times over the years. “Three of my main arteries are blocked, and I have narrowing in another artery, which is also very weak, so the doctor filled out a referral for me to receive treatment abroad,” Al-Haggag told Drop Site as he sat in his makeshift tent in the Jawazat displacement camp in western Gaza City. “But unfortunately, until now, I haven’t been able to leave. I’m waiting for my turn, just like thousands of other patients.” He continued, “Before, hospitals had the resources. I could get stents that helped keep me alive, and that gave many other patients a chance to live….After the war that was waged against us, the hospitals have no resources. The hospitals are destroyed, treatment is unavailable, and there are no facilities equipped to receive patients with serious conditions like heart disease.” “Medical equipment is virtually nonexistent, and what remains is poor quality and worn out,” he said. “We are suffering from an extremely severe shortage of medical equipment. The longer this continues, the greater the danger. Our lives are at risk.” Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Jawa Ahmad contributed to this report. Sami Vanderlip edited the video.