he Gaza Strip is facing an ever-deepening crisis in medical care and rehabilitation.
In September 2024, the World Health Organization estimated that nearly a quarter of the injured — more than 22,000 people — had sustained wounds that resulted in the loss of limbs or permanent disabilities. By September 2025, that number had almost doubled: More than 41,800 people in Gaza now require long-term rehabilitation due to injuries.
With restrictions on the entry of medical equipment, prosthetic limbs and mobility aids such as wheelchairs and crutches have become nearly inaccessible.
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As a result, thousands of wounded people — including children, women, and the elderly — face an uncertain future, deprived of any real chance of treatment or recovery.
Behind these horrifying statistics are real faces, real names, and real stories.
These are beloved people who have lost parts of their bodies — not just numbers in UN reports.
During a visit to Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital to check on my friend after her home was struck by an Israeli missile, I met Nour, whose hands were injured, and her little sister Alaa, a 5-year-old girl whose arm and leg were amputated.
Walking through the hospital corridors, the smell of medicine and the sound of pain took me back to June 8, 2024, the day I was wounded by a tank shell.
That day, shrapnel hit my hand, back, and face. One fragment lodged near a nerve in my hand, where it still remains, a constant reminder of what so many of us have endured.
Alaa and I shared the same pain — the pain of the body and the pain of loss.
When I first saw her, she was crying softly, whispering through her tears: “I wish I could eat with my right hand again … play and color with my friends.”
Her simple words captured the tragedy of an entire generation deprived of its most basic right — to live a normal childhood.
Whenever Alaa needed to go to the bathroom or undergo medical tests, her sisters had to carry her in their arms.
There were no wheelchairs or crutches in the hospital.
Her suffering wasn’t only physical. It was also the crushing feeling of helplessness and total dependence on others at a time when she should have been receiving care and emotional support.
In times of war, caring for a wounded child who cannot even relieve themselves without help becomes an unbearable burden, even for those who love them deeply.
Not because they don’t want to help, but because they themselves are struggling to survive.
As the siege continues and medical supplies remain restricted, Israel compounds the pain of the wounded, adding psychological torment to physical suffering and leaving children and women to face their pain with no tools to ease it, no devices to help them move.
Recently, reports spread about a young woman from Gaza named Nibal Al-Hissi, who pleaded through media and social networks for a medical referral that would allow her to travel abroad to receive prosthetic limbs.
I couldn’t wait. I reached out to her myself, hoping her voice could be heard by the world.
She spoke to me through tears, her voice heavy with grief and longing for a life she had lost — “I had so many dreams and ambitions…”
Al-Hissi, 25 years old, lived in northern Gaza with her 2-year-old daughter, Rita.
During one Israeli airstrike, their home was bombed while she was holding Rita in her arms, trying to shield her from the blast.
The child miraculously survived, but her mother lost both of her arms.
Since that day, Al-Hissi has been unable to hold or feed her daughter, yet she continues to fight every day through pain, isolation, and a fragile hope of getting treatment.
Now, she depends entirely on her family for everything — eating, drinking, moving, and even basic personal care.
Al-Hissi told me she longs for the moments when her daughter, little Rita, would ask her for something simple, but what hurts her most is that she can no longer meet any of her child’s needs.
Her pain deepened when her husband left her after the incident, believing she could no longer care for their child or their home.
Al-Hissi says that everything in her life has become difficult, from the unhealed wounds to the loneliness that her disability has imposed, to the postponed dream of receiving prosthetic limbs that would restore even a small part of her independence.
To the tragedy of Gaza’s wounded, another layer of suffering is added: the near-impossible task of securing medical referrals and traveling for treatment outside the Strip.
Despite the growing number of those needing complex surgeries or prosthetics, medical referrals remain scarce and heavily bureaucratic, often taking months for approval if they ever arrive at all.
The Rafah crossing, the only real gateway for patients, opens and closes unpredictably due to political and security conditions, leaving thousands of wounded people trapped in endless waiting.
Behind every referral request lies a human story suspended between hope and despair. Patients wait for a phone call or a travel permit that could mean life itself, as their days fade away in pain and immobility inside hospitals lacking even the most basic resources.
War does not only kill. It steals. It steals land, homes, and loved ones. It steals limbs. It steals souls.
Pain does not end with survival; it begins when you are left to live with what’s missing, with what’s broken, with a body that will never be the same again.
And if death sometimes seems easier than losing a part of yourself, then choosing to live afterward, despite it all, is the purest form of resistance.