Gaza hospitals grapple with crippling lab shortages, forcing doctors to triage diagnostics

In central Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, laboratory director Bassem Hassan says the war-induced siege has halted blood-gas testing and depleted key supplies such as blood-collection tubes and chemistry reagents. Automated analysers are offline, and sterilisation equipment and refrigerators have failed, creating an 87 % shortage of testing materials and a 74 % gap in essential consumables. Doctors therefore prioritize kidney, cancer, cardiac and intensive-care cases, sometimes sending patients to costly private labs or using only physical exams and ECGs.

Only five of the 18 CT scanners in the enclave remain operational, and all MRI units are destroyed, further limiting diagnostics. Staff at al-Shifa Hospital echo the need to restrict lab work, X-rays and scans to urgent cases, leaving many chronic-disease patients on waiting lists. Patients like Yousef al-Athamneh, a dialysis-dependent man, fear a total loss of life-sustaining supplies, while cancer patients confront drug shortages after the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital’s destruction.