GAZA, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Abdullah Al-Mashharawi's crutches lean against the flimsy wall of a tent wedged in the rubble of the damaged Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in western Gaza City.

For nine years, dialysis has sustained the 39-year-old father of seven. Now, displaced five times across a war-torn strip, he faces an impossible equation: no fuel means no treatment.

"The number of patients has increased, and the rooms are no longer equipped to serve us. With no fuel or water, the situation has returned to zero," he told Xinhua, sweat beading on his forehead in the sweltering heat. His reality mirrors that of hundreds of kidney failure patients across Gaza, where dialysis machines stand silent amid chronic fuel shortages.

The collapse is systematic. At al-Shifa Hospital, once Gaza's medical cornerstone, all dialysis services were suspended starting from Tuesday. Intensive care now operates mere hours daily.

"This is not incidental damage. It is a deliberate effort to dismantle essential services," said hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmeia.

Over 400 kidney failure patients have died since October 2023, health authorities in Gaza said in a press statement, warning of "inevitable death" for patients across the enclave.

For 55-year-old Umm Islam Al-Dadah, who has lived with kidney failure for 15 years, reduced sessions have triggered violent complications.

"Normally, I'd receive dialysis three times a week. Now, there's no fuel, no treatment," the woman, lying on a thin mattress in a makeshift shelter close to the hospital, told Xinhua in a weak voice.

"Last week, I had only one session. I later suffered a terrible colic attack. We eat lentils because there's nothing else. My anemia is getting worse, and the pain is constant," she lamented.

While observers estimate Gaza needs 500 aid trucks daily, Israel restricts the entry to dozens. "The Israeli army imposes suffocating restrictions on the entry of fuel and medical supplies. Every day in our hospitals feels like a battle to save lives with empty hands," Munir al-Bursh, director of the health authorities in Gaza, told Xinhua.

"Patients cannot wait. Every delay is a slow death sentence," he said.

Meanwhile, medical staff are operating in exhaustion. "They work without pay or equipment. The patients are dying in front of us, and we can do nothing," kidney specialist in Gaza Nidal Al-Sharif told Xinhua. Human rights groups have also been pleading for evacuation corridors amid the widespread shutdown of machines due to fuel shortages and lack of maintenance.

Families of patients living in the ruins now have the same plea. "We're not asking for anything impossible. We just want to live and get our treatment like people anywhere else in the world," Mariam Salam, a woman with only one kidney from Gaza City, told Xinhua.

"As calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and increased aid access rise internationally, we are hundreds of kidney patients in Gaza who remain in critical condition, with our lives hanging in the balance as we wait for electricity, fuel, and functioning medical equipment," she said. ■