Ahmed Ayad was unfortunate to fall sick under what Israel and its allies in the west are defining as the “ministries of terror”.
The 42-year-old Palestinian father of five began kidney dialysis at a hospital in Gaza City six weeks ago at just about the time Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and international sanctions against the Hamas government began to bite in the health ministry.

The resulting shortages of drugs and others supplies have forced Shifa hospital to cut back Mr Ayad’s dialysis treatment.

“The day they reduced my treatment I was so so tired. I’m afraid they will reduce it more. Look at my face. I feel like a dead person,” he said.

But Mr Ayad has been lucky. Shifa hospital says four people receiving dialysis have died over the past three weeks because of the shortages. It is the same in the cancer ward, where there is a diminishing supply of chemotherapy drugs, and other parts of the hospital where even basic antibiotics have not arrived for a month.

Mr Ayad is also fortunate that there is someone to treat him. None of the medical staff at Shifa has been paid for the past two months. It is the same for the rest of the Palestinian Authority’s 160,000 workers whose wages usually come from a mix of foreign aid and customs duties now frozen by Israel with increasingly serious consequences for the 1 million Palestinians – one in four of the population – supported by government salaries.
guardian.co.uk

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