Gaza’s hospital count reflects the reality of providing healthcare to over 2 million people in a territory they largely cannot leave. Before the current conflict, the Gaza Strip had 35 hospitals and 159 primary health care centers, serving one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. That number sounds high until you look at what those hospitals actually provide: just 1.2 hospital beds per 1,000 residents, which falls below the global average and well short of what most developed countries maintain.
A Blockaded Population Needs Local Care
The single biggest reason Gaza built so many hospitals is that its residents have extremely limited ability to seek medical care elsewhere. Since 2007, movement in and out of the territory has been tightly restricted. Patients needing specialized treatment unavailable in Gaza must apply for permits to cross into Israel or the West Bank, a process that routinely delays care. WHO data from 2013 showed that even in relatively stable periods, about 7.6% of patients who applied for crossing permits received no response at all, missing their hospital appointments. Others were called for security interrogation as a condition of processing their applications.
This bottleneck forced Gaza to develop its own medical infrastructure for nearly every specialty, from cardiac catheterization to oncology to neurosurgery. In most small territories, patients with complex conditions would simply be referred to larger hospitals in neighboring areas. Gaza couldn’t rely on that option, so it built the capacity internally.
High Disease Burden, High Demand
Gaza has roughly 350,000 patients with chronic conditions like cancer and diabetes, plus around 50,000 pregnant women needing regular care at any given time. About 1,200 patients depend on regular dialysis, including 45 children. These aren’t conditions you can manage with a few clinics. Dialysis alone requires dedicated hospital infrastructure running multiple sessions per day, every day.
The population is also young and fast-growing, which creates constant demand for maternal and pediatric services. Conflict-related trauma adds another layer. Hospitals in Gaza don’t just handle routine medicine; they absorb periodic surges of mass casualties that would strain healthcare systems many times their size. Building redundancy into the system, spreading hospitals across different areas, was a practical response to the likelihood that any single facility could be damaged or overwhelmed.
Spread Across Five Governorates
Gaza’s hospitals aren’t clustered in one place. They’re distributed across the territory’s five governorates, from the north down through Gaza City, the central camps area, Khan Younis, and Rafah. This distribution exists because internal movement within Gaza can also be restricted during military operations, when roads are blocked or neighborhoods placed under evacuation orders. If all hospitals were concentrated in Gaza City, residents in Khan Younis or Rafah could be cut off from care entirely during escalations.
The current conflict has demonstrated exactly why this matters. WHO reported in 2025 that North Gaza had been “stripped of nearly all health care,” with Kamal Adwan Hospital forced out of service and Al-Awda Hospital functioning only as a basic trauma stabilization point. In the south, Nasser Medical Complex, Al-Amal, and Al-Aqsa hospitals were overwhelmed by surges of injured people combined with waves of displaced residents. The European Gaza Hospital went out of service entirely after an attack in May 2025, eliminating the only available neurosurgery, cardiac care, and cancer treatment in its area.
Multiple Operators, Multiple Funding Sources
Not all of Gaza’s hospitals are government-run. The system includes facilities operated by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugees), private organizations, and NGOs. International donors funded much of this construction. Qatar has been a major contributor, with the Qatar Red Crescent Society funding hospital restoration and clinic rehabilitation. Turkey built the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. Various European governments, Gulf states, and international organizations have financed facilities or equipment over the decades.
This patchwork of funding sources partly explains the high count. Each organization built facilities to serve its specific mandate or community. UNRWA operates health centers for the refugee population, which makes up about 70% of Gaza’s residents. The Ministry of Health runs the major public hospitals. NGOs fill gaps in specialty care. The result is a large number of facilities, many of them small or narrowly focused, rather than a few large centralized hospitals.
Many Hospitals, Still Not Enough Capacity
Despite the number of facilities, Gaza’s healthcare system was stretched thin even before the current war. With only 1.2 beds per 1,000 people across 2,614 total hospital beds, the system operated with minimal margin. Over 90% of primary healthcare facilities reported shortages in essential medications, including insulin, blood pressure drugs, and dialysis supplies. Equipment frequently malfunctioned, and replacement parts were difficult to import under blockade conditions. When a cardiac catheterization machine broke down at a Ministry of Health facility, patients were simply redirected to private or NGO hospitals inside Gaza, driving up referrals to those facilities.
The 35 hospitals represented a system built to barely meet peacetime demand in a territory where peacetime was never guaranteed. By early 2025, only 19 of 37 hospitals (the count had grown slightly with field hospitals) remained functional, and 90% of those were operating only partially. Across all types of health facilities, just 260 out of 619 service points were still working. The number of hospitals Gaza built wasn’t a surplus. It was an attempt to create enough redundancy that some portion of the system could survive the disruptions that have defined life in the territory for nearly two decades.