Salim Fuad Abu Rahma, 21, who lives with his family in Gaza, says his school friend has suffered three heart attacks during a school trip and received a kidney transplant two months ago. “I saw him in hospital and it was terrible for him,” Fuad says. “He told me he had been on four heart surgery operations but none of them have fixed him.”

The only other health problems on the list in Gaza are the deaths of three soldiers in July due to a blast in a bus.

Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from the Gaza Strip, says that medical staff treating these victims at hospitals across Gaza are in a desperate crisis.

“When you hear these stories of hospital patients, it is hard to make peace with them because they are human,” Tyab says. “They are like anybody else with a life. They are in the throes of trauma and this is life and death.”

Hospital staff in Gaza say many of the medical cases were brought by friends and family. Some patients, however, are suffering serious complications and it now takes about three days for a patient to die, they say.

This is not new and does not appear to be in reaction to the recent tensions in the region.

“It’s not about a political conflict,” Dr. Ahmed al-Zakarra, a senior surgeon at the Sheikh Radwan Hospital in Shujaiya, told Al Jazeera. “The most important thing is that these people are suffering, they have no life. We do everything possible, but sometimes the results are bad.”

He says that for this reason these patients should be treated as if they were in “high-risk” settings like a trauma centre.

In the latest updates to the Palestinian News Agency, Palestine reported an explosion occurred near a house in the Gaza Strip. Hamas security forces responded by firing more than 150 rounds of fire on a military and civilian area.

The cause of the blast is unknown, and further details are yet to emerge.

Hospital officials said the hospital is working with doctors and aid organisations to support patients, some of whom need blood transfusions as well as dialysis, oxygen and medications.

One former Israeli medic says the only thing that can solve its problems is giving medical assistance so these patients can survive.