I am not writing this as a politician; I am writing this as an ophthalmologist who has stood inside hospitals in Gaza.
In May and October 2024, I entered Gaza with the World Health Organization (WHO) as part of a medical mission. I carried retinal equipment, laser devices, and cryotherapy tools – not as advanced luxuries, but as the minimum needed to try to save sight.
What I witnessed in those months was not just a healthcare system under pressure. It was a system fighting to keep medicine itself alive.
In ophthalmology, timing is everything – seconds and minutes matter, and a delayed intervention can mean irreversible blindness for the patient.
Inside Gaza, care is forced to wait. During my medical mission, I saw surgeons ready to operate but lacking any functioning equipment. I saw patients who had already lost one eye, terrified of losing the second. I saw clinics full of people who knew that treatment existed, but could not reach it.
And I remember one child I will never forget. He had been shot in both eyes. The injury itself was devastating, but what broke me was not only the trauma – it was the delay in his care. By the time he finally reached care, it was too late to save his sight.
He was crying, repeating one sentence over and over: “I just want to see, I just want to see.”
There are moments in medicine when, rather than science acting as the limit of what can be achieved, instead it is circumstance that prevents patients from having the care they deserve.
Ophthalmic services in Gaza are not currently collapsing because of a lack of expertise. They are collapsing because the tools of medicine are being destroyed, damaged, or prevented from entering the city.
The retinal systems in Gaza are out of service. Operating screens are shattered. There are no spare parts and no replacements coming into the city.
But when an ophthalmic system stops, blindness does not wait.
This is not about politics; this is about patients.
Doctors there are still working – examining, counseling, and trying their best for their patients – but medicine cannot function without the tools that make treatment possible.
Healthcare should never become collateral damage. Hospitals should remain protected at all times, no matter what the situation.
Access to treatment should never be conditional. Because every broken machine means a lost chance, and every delayed surgery means a life permanently and irrevocably altered.
Vision is not a luxury; it is a human right.
And today, in Gaza, that right is being lost – not because medicine doesn't have the answers, but because medicine is being held back from reaching the people who desperately need it the most.
