Prevention of access to healthcare
In August and November 2018, we wrote to the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt and the Israeli Ambassador to raise concerns about increasingly severe restrictions placed by Israeli authorities on patients seeking to travel outside Gaza to access life-saving treatment.
Since 2007, when Israel imposed a land, air, and sea blockade, Gaza has effectively been closed. As a result, sophisticated diagnostic and therapeutic medical services of the kind required to treat illnesses such as cancer are unavailable. This means patients are often required to travel outside Gaza to access treatment.
Withholding access to healthcare and treatment contravenes both medical ethics and international law, particularly the right to health as enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (article 12) and Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Further reading
Read our letter to the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt - November 2018
Read our letter to the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt - August 2018