JERUSALEM, Wednesday, November 27, 2019 (WAFA) – Only 58% of permit applications for Gaza patients to cross Erez/Beit Hanoun checkpoint into Israel to reach either East Jerusalem or West Bank hospitals in October were approved, making it the lowest approval rate since April 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

A third (34%) of permits approved were for children under 18 and a fifth (22%) were for patients aged 60 years or older, it said in its monthly report on health access for patients in the occupied Palestinian territory.

It said while only 9% of the total applications were denied, including 33 children under 18 and 21 patients aged 60 years or older and about a quarter (24%) of denied applications were for appointments in oncology, 9% for orthopedics, 8% for cardiology, 8% for hematology, and 6% for ophthalmology, 33% of the total were delayed access to care, receiving no definitive response to their application by the date of their hospital appointment.

Of the delayed applications, 173 were for children under the age of 18 and 90 applications were for patients aged 60 years or older. More than a third (34%) of those delayed had appointments for oncology, 11% for pediatrics, 10% for hematology, 7% for cardiology, 7% for ophthalmology, and 5% for nuclear medicine. The remaining 24% were for 21 other specialties.

In October, four patients were called for security interrogation as a prerequisite to processing of their permit applications, said the report. The patients called for security interrogation were a 67-year-old woman with cancer of the biliary tract, a 42-year-old woman with breast cancer, a 49-year-old male with ischemic heart disease and an 18-year-old man with secondary hypertension. All four were delayed, not receiving a definitive response to their applications by the date of their hospital appointments, it said.

M.K.