A wounded child lies on the floor and receives medical treatment at the Nasser hospital where the injured and dead arrive following the Israeli military targeting of a southeastern district of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on July 25, 2024.

Gaza City, July 28 (RHC)-- Gazan health authorities warn about a "certain health catastrophe"  as the only hospital still operational in the southern city of Khan Yunis may also shut down amid Israel's invasion of the populated area — once designated a  "safe zone" for the displaced, says the Gaza Health Ministry.

In a Saturday statement, the health ministry released an update on the status of several medical institutions around the city, where Israeli military forces launched an offensive on July 22.

Gaza’s civil defense agency said Saturday that Israel’s offensive around Khan Younis has killed about 170 people and wounded hundreds.  Residents in southern neighborhoods were told to leave after being warned that the regime’s military would “forcefully operate” in the Khan Yunis. Virtually 150,000 people had to flee the populated area.

The Gaza Health Ministry said, "Due to the increasing number of areas forcibly evacuated in southern Gaza, several primary health care centers are now out of service.”  Many primary healthcare centers, it said, are out of service, in addition to several field medical points in Khan Yunis.

The ministry also warned that the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, the only hospital still operational in the city, may shut down.  The hospital’s shutdown, it said, would lead to a “definitive health disaster.”

The ministry said that "the increasing number of displaced persons living without access to water and amidst sewage and piled-up waste, without personal hygiene supplies, makes conditions ripe for the spread of polio and other diseases."

“[This] makes things completely conducive to the spread of the polio virus and other diseases that have been spreading like wildfire among the displaced.”

On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that it is sending more than a million polio vaccines to Gaza.  The health agency said that no cases of the infectious disease have been recorded yet but without immediate action, it was “just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected”.

The director of Nasser Hospital said earlier this week that doctors working at that facility are overwhelmed by the large influx of wounded and sick people.  Medics said it had become impossible to walk through the hospital, with wounded people and patients spread out everywhere.

Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 39,258 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 90,500 others.