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Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - AMMAN — Doctors say 2-year-old Habiba al-Askari has days to live as gangrene creeps up her arms and legs, and only an urgent medical evacuation out of Gaza may save her life.
She has a rare genetic condition: protein C deficiency, which causes excessive blood clotting and can lead to a slow death. The condition is highly treatable – but not in Gaza, where healthcare institutions and supplies have been decimated by Israel’s yearslong war in the Palestinian enclave.
Earlier this month, international aid groups worked through the complex process of obtaining permission from Israeli authorities to allow Habiba to leave Gaza for treatment.
Habiba did receive formal permission to leave Gaza, according to COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates permissions for movement in and out of Gaza. And authorities in nearby Jordan were set to bring her to Amman for treatment, following a CNN report on her case. Earlier this week, a complicated mission was set in motion, with the Jordanian military prepared to evacuate Habiba on Wednesday.
But at the last minute, Israeli authorities delayed the mission, Jordanian authorities tell CNN – a crushing surprise for her family and doctors. For now she remains in Gaza, her condition worsening by the hour.
“Habiba’s life is in danger now,” her distraught mother Rana told CNN on Thursday, in a flood of tears. “I do not understand why they won’t allow her out to get medical treatment. What crime did she commit?”
COGAT did not respond to CNN’s repeated requests for comment on the delay.
Habiba is one of at least 2,500 children in Gaza in urgent need of medical evacuation, according to the UN. Under the recently signed ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, Israeli authorities are supposed to increase the number of Gaza residents allowed out for treatment.
But no medical evacuations from Gaza have taken place for two weeks. The last evacuation was on January 16, when just 12 patients were evacuated to European countries, according to the World Health Organization. Approximately 12,000 people in Gaza are still awaiting medical evacuation, according to the UN.
COGAT previously told CNN that it has enabled 24 medical evacuations from Gaza through Israel to other countries “in recent months,” for 1,075 Gaza residents seeking medical care.
On Thursday morning, Habiba was admitted to an intensive care unit in Gaza with a suspected lung infection. Surrounded by foreign and local doctors scrambling to keep her alive, she lay barely conscious, moaning in pain between each labored breath.
The toddler’s arms and right leg have turned black with gangrene. Doctors told CNN that her right leg will have to be amputated, and it may be too late to save her arms.
Gangrene can lead to sepsis — an infection spreading to the bloodstream — that raises the risk of rapid organ failure and death.
A senior Jordanian official told CNN that Amman is continuing to push the request to evacuate Habiba’s with Israeli authorities, and stands ready to move immediately.
With Gaza’s health system under fire, doctors do not have the diagnostic tools to definitively determine what is happening to her, Dr. Mohamed Kuziez, an American pediatrician from Colorado, who recently left Gaza after volunteering with NGO Rahma Worldwide, told CNN.
Dr. Kuziez first treated Habiba several weeks ago, in Gaza City, and oversaw her care as medics waited for Israeli permission to move her south, a first step in the evacuation process.
But as soon as he landed back in the US, he received news of the dramatic deterioration in her condition. “I’m trying to be there to support the mom, to try and provide whatever medical advice we can provide,” he said, choking back tears.
“But in the back of my mind, I am worried it may have gotten too far. There’s still hope for her, but it’s just decreasing by the minute.”
He’s tormented by the knowledge that Habiba’s condition could have been treated in time, if she had had access to the right facility. When Dr. Kuziez left Gaza, he recalled, “my heart wanted to just take her with me in my arms and run across the border with her.”
Blocking her evacuation will be a death sentence, he warned. “For anybody with medical knowledge, it seems like a deliberate push to essentially kill this child. There’s no other way to describe it. This child needs emergency critical care.” — CNN
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