JERUSALEM, April 1: The World Health Organisation lashed out at Israel on Tuesday for denying or delaying travel permits for critically ill Gaza Strip residents, saying the right to health appeared to be optional for Palestinians.

Ambrogio Manenti, who heads the WHO’s West Bank and Gaza office, said case studies of patients who died while waiting for permits to travel to Israel for treatment “show nonsense, inhumanity and, at the end, tragedy”.

“The right to health appears to be optional for Palestinians,” he added.

The UN agency cited the case of Amir al-Yazji, nine, who died of Meningeal encephalitis at a hospital in Gaza in November after his family faced one hurdle after another to get a travel permit only to have authorities deny the documents to the ambulance team at the last minute.

Tertiary health care is virtually unavailable in the Palestinian territories and a strict permit system limits patients’ access to hospitals in Israel, the report said.

But Israel says it issued more than 7,200 permits last year for patients to travel out of Gaza for medical reasons, and insists it gives high priority to patients who need treatment.

The cases highlighted by the WHO study show critically ill patients and their families going through an often nightmarish process to obtain the permits, which in some cases are denied “for security reasons.” —AFP