Gaza – Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS)
The Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), the second-largest provider of primary healthcare services in the Gaza Strip, warns that a number of its health services and facilities are at imminent risk of shutting down, as a severe shortage of fuel, oils, and spare parts leaves it unable to operate and maintain the electrical generators and vehicles its work depends on.
PMRS supports between 40,000 and 65,000 patients every week, and any disruption to its operations would place this care in jeopardy. With Gaza's hospital system decimated, the burden of care has fallen ever more heavily on organisations like PMRS. Our services are no longer only the first line of care — they have expanded to fill the gaps left by a collapsing hospital system, absorbing needs that hospitals can no longer meet. To leave PMRS unsupported at this moment would be catastrophic.
The consequences of such a collapse are not hypothetical. The peer-reviewed evidence is clear: when primary and generator-dependent care in Gaza is interrupted, preventable deaths follow. More than 350,000 people in Gaza live with chronic conditions such as cancer and diabetes, and 50,000 pregnant women are struggling to access care¹ — all of them dependent on exactly the kind of services PMRS provides. The Lancet has warned that excess deaths from the loss of this care will be far larger than the numbers killed directly, with consequences enduring for years.² Every generator forced out of service and every mobile clinic grounded brings that toll closer.
Without these supplies, generators will be forced out of service, cutting power to health centres and clinics and rendering essential medical devices and equipment inoperable. The result would be the collapse of critical services for communities that have no other means of care. PMRS further warns that its mobile medical clinics face suspension for the same reason, depriving displaced families and residents in hard-to-reach areas of one of the last remaining lifelines to healthcare.
PMRS calls on the United Nations, international and humanitarian organisations, and the wider international community — including governments and states with the leverage to act — to intervene urgently to secure and facilitate the entry of the fuel, oils, and spare parts required to keep generators and medical vehicles running. Every day of continued shortage brings thousands of people closer to being cut off from the most basic healthcare, and the responsibility to prevent this rests with those who have the power to act.
References
1. Continuity of Chronic Disease Care in Gaza: a Commentary on Health System Collapse and Humanitarian Imperatives (synthesis of peer-reviewed literature, WHO and UN reports, and field assessments, 2023–2025). Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12638478/
2. Excess deaths in Gaza. The Lancet Global Health, 2024. Available at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(24)00267-5/fulltext
