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GENEVA: The UN’s health agency pleaded Friday for thousands of people in desperate need of medical care to be allowed to leave Gaza, in what it said would be a “game-changer.”
The World Health Organization has supported the medical evacuation of nearly 7,800 patients out of the Gaza Strip since the war with Israel began two years ago — and estimates there are 15,000 people currently needing treatment outside the Palestinian territory.
But a US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect on October 10 has not sped up the process — the WHO has been able to evacuate only 41 critical patients since then.
Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, called for all crossings out of Gaza into Israel and Egypt to be opened up during the ceasefire — not only for the entry of aid but for medical evacuations too.
“All medical corridors need to be opened,” he said, particularly to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as happened routinely before the war.
“It is vital and is the most cost-effective route. If that route opened, it would really be a... game-changer.”
Speaking via video link from Jerusalem, he told journalists in Geneva that two evacuations were planned for next week, but he wanted them every day and said the WHO was ready to take “a minimum of 50 patients per day.”
At the current rate, he said evacuating the 15,000 people needing treatment — including 4,000 children — would drag on for a decade or so.
The WHO says more than 700 people have died waiting for medical evacuation since the war began.
The UN health agency has called for more countries to step up and accept Gazan patients. While over 20 countries have taken patients, only a handful have done so in large numbers.
Peeperkorn said only a fraction of Gaza’s health system remained in service — just 14 of 36 hospitals are even partially functional for a population topping two million.

KIRYAT GAT, Israel: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that more countries are ready to normalize relations with Israel, but the decision would await a broader regional agreement.
Rubio, who was touring a US-led multinational center in Israel aimed at coordinating a ceasefire in Gaza, said that a sustained end to the war would encourage more countries to join the so-called Abraham Accords, under which a number of Arab countries normalized ties with Israel in 2020.
“We have a lot of countries that want to join” the accords, he said.
“I think there are some countries you could probably add right now if you wanted to, but we want to do a big thing about it, and so we’re working on it,” Rubio told reporters on a visit to Israel.
“So, I think that would be great, and I think that could be a byproduct of achieving some of this,” he said, referring to the Gaza ceasefire.
Rubio did not mention specific countries, saying that they needed to address their domestic audiences first, but said “there’s some bigger than others.”
����ֱ�� had been in talks with the United States on normalizing ties with Israel, in what would be a historic milestone as the kingdom is home to Islam’s two holiest sites.
But the kingdom stepped back on normalization after war broke out in Gaza following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.
Both US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu see the Abraham Accords, which saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco forge ties with Israel, as a crowning achievement.