The Director of the Government Eye Hospital at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Abdul Salam Sabah, said that the number of eye patients has increased significantly during the two years of Israel’s war of extermination against the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Sabah added that more than 17,000 citizens in Gaza sustained various eye injuries during the war, one third of them children, amid the medical sector’s inability to provide treatment after the occupation destroyed most medical equipment. He noted that many patients and injured people have completely lost their eyesight in recent months due to Israel’s prevention of the entry of medical equipment and devices necessary for surgical operations, warning that thousands of other patients face the same fate.

He stressed that the injuries resulted from the occupation army’s intense bombardment and the spread of shrapnel and fragments, which caused serious eye injuries to a large number of citizens. He also pointed out that 6,000 people in Gaza suffer from chronic eye diseases, which likewise require advanced diagnostic equipment that is unavailable in the Strip, exacerbating patients’ suffering and threatening them with loss of vision.