Richard Piepkeorn, the representative of the World Health Organization in the Palestinian territories, stated on Wednesday that "a number of partners, including the WHO, are urgently discussing the possibility of evacuating patients and medical staff from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza." WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press conference in Geneva that "patients and staff must be protected even if hospitals are used for military purposes." He added, "Hospitals are not battlegrounds... the Israeli military incursion into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is absolutely unacceptable."
Palestinian health authorities confirmed that "there is an increasing difficulty in obtaining accurate numbers of the dead and injured in Gaza due to the collapse of hospitals and the healthcare system in parts of the area besieged by Israel." However, the ministry stated that with the "incursion of Israeli forces deep into the Gaza Strip and the deterioration of communication infrastructure, contact with hospitals has been cut off, making systematic data collection more difficult." The ministry added in a statement: "For the fourth consecutive day, the ministry is facing challenges in updating casualty figures due to the collapse of services and communications in hospitals in the north."
