Over 100 patients from Gaza to be evacuated to UAE, Romania: WHO

More than 100 patients, including children suffering from trauma injuries and chronic diseases, will be evacuated from Gaza on Wednesday in a rare transfer out of the war-ravaged enclave, a World Health Organization official said.

The WHO said that alongside its partners it would evacuate as many as 113 patients, with most going to the United Arab Emirates and some heading to Romania for specialised care.

"These are ad hoc measures. What we have requested repeatedly is a sustained medevac (medical evacuation) outside of Gaza," said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, adding that 12,000 people were awaiting transfer.

The patients will travel in a large convoy on Wednesday via the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.

If it goes ahead, it would be the largest evacuation from Gaza since October 2023, according to data from the UN health agency.

Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories, said he was hopeful the evacuation would go ahead.

He said efforts were currently under way to bring patients from various hospitals across the Gaza Strip to the Gaza European Hospital near Khan Yunis in the south.

They will be transported to the Kerem Shalom crossing early Wednesday and then flown on to the UAE and Romania, Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva, via video link from Gaza.

Those on the list figure among up to 14,000 people currently waiting in Gaza to be evacuated out of the territory for medical reasons.

Around half of them have sustained trauma injuries in the war and the others are suffering from serious illnesses such as cancer, he said.

Since the war in Gaza began, fewer than 5,000 people have been granted medical evacuations out of the territory.

Only 282 have meanwhile been able to leave since Israel shuttered Gaza's main Rafah border crossing in early May, Peeperkorn said, adding that around a third of them had been children.

Peeperkorn lamented the "ad hoc" access to desperately-needed medical evacuations from Gaza.

"What we need is regular access... which would be properly supported, facilitated and not made unnecessarily dangerous," he said.

"We need medical corridors, and the first medical corridor we basically request to be restored is the traditional referral pathway from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and... a second medical corridor to Egypt should be open again, and maybe to Jordan."

Hamas's October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed 43,391 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health ministry figures which the United Nations considers to be reliable.

(With additional input from AFP)