Mariam* was delivered devastating news in late September 2023: it was breast cancer. Shattered but still hopeful, the 41-year-old Palestinian quickly started exploring treatment options at the nearby Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital (TPFH) in Gaza.
But then the bombs started falling.
"A few weeks after, the war started," she recalled, "and from that day until now, I have been suffering."
Mariam sits among dozens of others at the overcrowded Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis as the sounds of shelling continue around her.
Nearly two years on, she still doesn’t know what stage her cancer is — her latest biopsy results were lost when the European hospital stopped operating due to Israel’s strikes.
“I neither know the degree of the disease nor how to get the treatment,” she said, her voice breaking. “[I] don’t know anything.”
As Western nations announce breakthroughs in cancer research and try to move seriously injured patients to countries like the UK, thousands of people remain awaiting cancer care in Gaza. Here, war contributes to a second, slower wave of deaths from diseases like cancer, which in some cases could have been treated.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH) estimated in July 2025 that at least 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza require treatment, while approximately 2,900 people await evacuation for cancer care abroad. Experts suspect the true number of cancer sufferers in Gaza could be higher, as the ongoing devastation has brought diagnoses and early detection to a standstill.
Even then, diagnosis provides little comfort in Gaza. Mariam, like many others, spends hours walking to overstretched hospitals to get what little medication she can, but without proper care, the cancer will advance.
“All the doctors here are doing their best,” she added, though emergency centres overwhelmed by trauma patients mean cancer patients face longer waits.
“The hospital asked me for a CT scan, but I was told that I have to wait as the priority is for the injured,” she told The New Arab — the wait was more than 10 days.
“This is the most catastrophic conflict for cancer I've ever seen in my professional career,” said Dr Richard Sullivan, a medical oncologist and professor in Cancer Policy & Global Health at King's College London.
Of the 38 hospitals in Gaza, 94% have been damaged or destroyed, and many stopped operating, including the TPFH, Gaza’s only cancer-specialised facility.
“It’s gone,” Dr Sullivan re-emphasised. “Cancer care is gone. Anybody getting cancer now is going to present with advanced disease.”
Dr Zaki Al-Zaqzouq, an oncology doctor at Nasser Hospital, spoke of patients having nowhere to turn and doctors running out of options.
“Cancer patients are in a catastrophic condition,” he told The New Arab from Gaza, adding that delays were becoming deadly.
“I have noticed many cases that were at an early stage, but when treatment was delayed, the cases began to develop into difficult cases, some of which, unfortunately, led to death.”
The agonising wait is something many Palestinians worry about.
“Our biggest fear as cancer patients is the disease spreading even more, because we cannot find our treatment,” said an elderly Palestinian cancer patient who wished to remain anonymous. “I am not scared of cancer as much as I fear it spreading even more.”
At least 64,522 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel's genocide began in October 2023, according to Palestinian MoH data. It's understood these figures don’t include other deaths like cancer, even though treatment failures are often tied to the conflict.
Dealing with cancer in Gaza was already precarious before Israel's genocide started — diagnostic and treatment options were limited, and patients risked being denied approval from Israeli officials to travel to the West Bank for radiation services.
But some outcomes had been improving in areas such as breast cancer, and medical experts from the Arab world and beyond were working toward capacity building in the region. However, that progress was reversed entirely over the last two years.
For many cancer patients, the only hope is medical evacuation: a complex process hindered by delays to approvals by Israel’s authorities. According to data shared by the World Health Organisation, oncology patients were the second most evacuated type of patient after trauma victims, totalling 660 evacuations since May 2024. But the MoH said that at least 338 cancer patients died while waiting to travel.
Those who do secure a transfer are often taken to Jordan or Egypt, where healthcare teams can provide urgent care. But medics are noticing alarming trends among deteriorating conditions.
Dr Rawad Rihani, Chairperson of the Department of Paediatrics at King Hussein Cancer Center in Jordan, told The New Arab that she’s noticing cancer that is “really advanced, and this shouldn't be the case,” as many childhood cancers are usually curable.
“What we see right now with the cases that arrived in Jordan with cancer, really, there are no words to describe it… We rarely see these types of devastating and advanced cancers that are in some cases beyond treatment, so their suffering is immense.”
There’s also an emotional weight felt by those who leave the strip. “Those who just came in are shattered by the fact that some of their family members are here, some of them are back home,” Dr Rihani added. “They’re happy to receive treatment; at the same time, they're longing to be reunited with their families.”
Feelings of uncertainty and confusion follow evacuees across the region. In Cairo, 51-year-old Alaa* shares a single hospital room with three other Palestinian women. Strangers in Gaza, they’ve been bound by a shared experience of leaving their loved ones behind and crossing borders to get treatment.
Alaa doesn’t know what happened to her husband following his detainment by the Israeli occupation forces, but she took the chance to receive treatment for Stage 3 cancer because she needs to care for her 10-year-old son.
“I have no one but my son. He is my whole life,” she said from the dimly lit hospital bed. Her voice grew stronger when she spoke about returning home, although she doesn’t know when. “In Gaza, [I have] no home,” she said. “But all Gaza, [is] home. Even if it's a tent, I'll go. Even if it's on the street, I'll go. Even if it's in the sea, I'll go. [It’s] my holy land.”
Chances of survival among cancer patients continue to drop as starvation engulfs the Palestinian population, and an increasing number of hospitals suffer targeted attacks by Israeli forces.
This month, a UN-backed agency confirmed there’s a famine in Gaza following Israel’s blockade of aid, resulting in at least 206 deaths from malnutrition verified by the WHO. For cancer patients, malnutrition is even more deadly when combined with powerful cancer drugs.
“They need to have some tolerance to treatment, and that's really not the case because of malnutrition,” added Dr Rihani.
In Gaza, cancer has become terminal through genocide, siege, and silence. Dr Sullivan put it clearly: “Cancer is a death sentence.”
His concerns are sharpened by what he calls “the gross silence” of the cancer community. “There’s been a wholesale failure for the cancer organisations — from the European Cancer Organization to the American Society for Clinical Oncology — to stand up to this, which for me is kind of a moral failure.”
Until Israel’s bombs stop falling, Palestinian cancer patients remain trapped between the war outside and the war within.
*Psudonyms have been used to protect identities
Tamara Davison is a British freelance journalist reporting across the Middle East on humanitarian issues, post-conflict resolution and migration
Philip Theiss is a Dublin-based freelance journalist currently studying at Trinity College Dublin