A young Palestinian patient lies in her hospital bed at the An-Nasser hospital in Gaza City. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

In the brightly painted new intensive care unit wing of al-Awda, northern Gaza's only emergency medical facility in the massive Jebaliya refugee camp, doctors, nurses, aides and administrators are ready to provide emergency surgery services for the area's 300,000 people.

But the metal bed frames remain empty of patients -- and of mattresses, and IV bags, and heart monitors, and other basic supplies needed at a basic medical facility. The equipment has been purchased, but remains in the occupied West Bank city Ramallah, prevented by Israel from being taken into Gaza.

"In the last year, the service burden on al-Awda was tripled. We had difficulty especially after the Fatah-Hamas fighting, and through the closures beginning last year," Nehal Mehanna, programme officer at al-Awda tells IPS as she walks around the empty rooms.

"Israel is not letting certain medication and supplies into Gaza, through any checkpoint. For example, we have been waiting for seven months to have the operation tables to be shipped and enter Gaza through the Erez checkpoint -- the equipment is only one hour away by car, but we've been waiting for seven months. Sometimes we can get supplies through the Red Cross, but they're helping many organisations at the same time. They have limited supplies. It's a long, complicated procedure, and it all has to be approved by the Israeli authorities."

According to doctors in Gaza, over 180 patients have died as a result of lack of essential supplies since the Israeli-led blockade began in June 2007. Palestinians seeking medical treatment for cancer, heart disease, and kidney failure, among other illnesses, cannot access the services they need -- as Israel has prevented chemotherapy, heart and dialysis medications from entering Gaza. They have to look for treatment abroad, either in Egypt or in Israel. But since the blockade, even with written permission and international coordination, Israel has shut the borders to Palestinian patients coming from Gaza, resulting in many preventable deaths.

"We try to provide the best services we can," Mehanna tells IPS. "We have a colleague here, a nurse at the hospital, who has kidney failure. She has received written permission four times to leave and get treatment in Egypt, but the Israelis have prevented her from leaving. We hope she can get out and get treatment. She's our friend. It's a difficult situation."

Al-Awda hospital staff say they are quickly running out of anaesthesia. The hospital's pharmacist, Dr. Akram Naffar, shows IPS his small cache of anaesthetic medications, small boxes stacked on a spare white shelf at the back of the storage room. "We only have enough left for two, maybe three weeks," Naffar says. "I don't know what will happen at the end of the month. We can only live day by day."

To read the full article please visit Inter Press Service.