'My son isn't allowed to cry': Gaza is running out of oxygen, and patients are paying the price

Nadia Dawwas, 53, sat anxiously beside her husband’s bed at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Gaza’s largest hospital, where an ambulance had rushed him three days earlier, after his condition suddenly worsened. His only oxygen cylinder had run dry, and for a few minutes, she said, his life hung in the balance.  

Her husband, Ayesh, 63, had begun struggling to breathe, gasping and shaking, until she called an ambulance to get him to the hospital. His decline was fast. 

"He started speaking in gestures," the mother of seven told The New Arab. “His oxygen level dropped to 60%, and after that he couldn’t move at all.” She was referring to his oxygen saturation level, which in a healthy person is usually between 95 and 100 percent. 

The strain on Ayesh’s family is part of a larger breakdown of a health system where oxygen itself has become scarce, stemming from Israel’s two-year genocide on the enclave.

A ceasefire in effect since October 2025 has not brought the supplies needed to repair them, as Israel restricts the entry of spare parts, fuel and maintenance equipment. 

The Ministry of Health said on August 15 that only 12 of Gaza’s 34 oxygen stations were running, and just four of 30 cylinder-filling devices were still in service — all working beyond capacity and liable to break down at any moment. 

The bigger picture is no better. As of May, the World Health Organization found that only 19 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals were even partially functioning, with insecurity and a lack of equipment cited as the leading causes. 

Ayesh suffers from severe chest infections and needs an oxygen machine around the clock. The family owns a single cylinder, enough to last him two days before it needs refilling through the Ministry of Health.

Last May, he developed angina, chest pain from reduced blood flow to the heart, which Nadia believes was worsened by Israel's ongoing war: the rocket fumes, gunpowder, smoke and polluted air have settled over the family’s daily life.  

They lost their home in Jabalia, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, and have been displaced more than seven times since, now living in a tent in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, where sand, heat and poor air quality all worsened Ayesh's condition, Nadia said.

She recalled one stretch when the cylinder couldn’t be refilled, forcing Ayesh to stay in the hospital for 24 days straight, which was the only place that could guarantee him oxygen.

Now she lives in fear that the station he depends on will shut down entirely.

A daily fight to breathe 

Chronic patients who constantly need oxygen come at every age, including one-month-old Yahya. His mother, Wafaa Sahmoud, 30 and a mother of four, lives with the worry that the oxygen will run out, or that she will not reach the hospital in time to save her son. 

Yahya was born with three heart defects — his arteries reversed, only one functioning valve, and a hole in his heart. 

His blood oxygen level plateaus at 74 percent and does not climb higher, Wafaa told The New Arab. His skin turns blue whenever he cries, so she tries everything to keep him from crying at all.

Last week, his levels dropped to 50 percent, and she rushed him to Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, where he spent a week in the incubator ward. He now needs urgent heart surgery. 

"My son isn’t allowed to cry," Wafaa said. "I do everything I can to stop him, because if he has a crying fit, his oxygen drops." 

Wafaaa lost her home in the first week of the war in October 2023 and has since been displaced more than 10 times before settling, for now, in a tent. She worries that dust and pollution will further damage her baby’s fragile heart. 

Mother of six, Samar Al-Mashal, 49, lost one of her sons amid Israel's attacks, and her own health began to deteriorate after his death in November 2023. She now needs a pacemaker fitted and is hooked up to an oxygen machine every few hours, even in her sleep. 

"Two months ago, I underwent a catheterisation procedure, in addition to an electrical shock treatment for my heart,” Samar said.

"I still suffer from heart flutter, tremors, and cardiac complications, which means I need frequent hospital visits." 

She has already been approved to travel outside Gaza for treatment and is waiting for her turn to leave. 

Originally from Al-Sudaniya in northern Gaza, Samar tells The New Arab that she has been displaced some 20 times with her family, causing her body to wear down and her illness to be harder to manage, she said. 

A system running on empty 

Zaher Al-Waheidi, director of the Information Systems Centre at the Ministry of Health, told The New Arab that supplying oxygen in Gaza "is a medical necessity and a lifeline" for many patients.  

Zaher said dozens of medical departments depend directly on the remaining 12 oxygen stations: more than 72 intensive care units rely on them entirely, along with 19 paediatric care units and roughly 54 neonatal intensive care beds.

Patients on intensive-care beds "are at risk of losing their lives" if the supply stops, he warned. 

"The crisis isn’t only about how many stations are running," he said, "of the 12 still working, only four can fill oxygen cylinders, and even those are operating well beyond their maximum capacity."

The block on spare parts, he said, has forced the Ministry of Health to rely on the few remaining filling stations: one in Gaza City, another serving field hospitals, one at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, and one at Nasser Medical Complex. The rest pump oxygen directly into hospitals, intensive-care rooms and incubator wards, and cannot be used to fill cylinders for patients at home. 

More than 500 patients across Gaza depend on oxygen, Zaher said, some of them 24 hours a day, including cancer patients, and those with pulmonary fibrosis – a chronic lung disease – liver disease and certain heart conditions. Twenty-two oxygen stations, he said, were destroyed during raids on hospitals, with no adequate alternatives to replace them. 

Patients who depend on oxygen fall into two groups, said Jehad Al-Sedoudi, head of the mechanical devices and equipment department at the Ministry of Health: those staying in hospitals and those who need it at home. For some of them, he told The New Arab, there is no time to wait.  

"The danger is not only that stations might stop, but keeping them running at all has become its own struggle," Jehad added.

Maintenance runs under a programme linked to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), but engineers have struggled since the start of the war to get hold of spare parts, caught between the occupation's siege and a block by Israeli authorities on the approvals needed to bring parts in. 

"We used to go to stations that had stopped working and take spare parts from them. That’s how we managed for three years," he said. "Now there are no more parts left to use."

The problem is not always large components, he continued. A single missing part can be tiny and still shut down an entire machine.

He pointed to a small rubber piece used in one of the filling devices, no bigger than a pinky fingernail, whose unavailability alone can knock the whole unit out of service. 

Nor does the strain stop at missing parts. "The stations are running well past what they were built for, driven by surging demand. A station is designed to run six to eight hours a day,” Jehad said, “but in Gaza, stations are currently running 20 to 22 hours a day, almost without pause."

For Jehad, the strain is also emotional. Engineers go to work each day knowing that any single breakdown could have direct consequences for patients’ lives.  

"The absence of oxygen means ending their lives immediately."

Ansam Al-Kitaa is a freelance journalist based in Gaza. For years, she has covered the successive wars in Gaza and their humanitarian and social impacts for international and local outlets

This article is published in collaboration with Egab