Gaza’s Breast Cancer Patients Face Treatment Gaps and Waits to Leave

Women with breast cancer in Gaza are facing a struggle that extends beyond the disease, as broken diagnostic equipment and missing medicines obstruct their access to care.

Disruptions to diagnostic services make it harder to assess patients’ conditions and determine their treatment needs. For women already confronting cancer, those gaps add uncertainty to an urgent medical battle.

The absence of radiotherapy further limits treatment options inside the territory. Alongside medicine shortages, it leaves patients without access to key elements of breast cancer care.

Other patients are waiting for referrals to receive treatment outside Gaza. Their access to care depends not only on medical arrangements but also on permission to cross out of the territory.

For these women, the wait for treatment is inseparable from the barriers surrounding it: equipment that does not work, drugs that cannot be found and care beyond Gaza that remains out of reach.