Current Crisis
- The conflict in Gaza began on 7th October 2023. As of the 29th July 2024:
- 39,363 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and 90,923 injured. Women and children, tragically, make up 70% of all those killed to date.
- Many people remain missing, presumably buried under the rubble, waiting for rescue or recovery.
- Heavy bombardments continue across Gaza from air, land and sea, as well as ground incursions and intense fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups, resulting in further civilian casualties and displacement, and destruction of houses and other civilian infrastructure.
- Only 16 of 36 hospitals across Gaza are partially functional, and only eight of these can currently admit patients. Not a single hospital is fully functional and all health facilities are facing critical shortages of staff, fuel and medical supplies. Eight field hospitals are operational, providing some support to a fragmented and overwhelmed health care system.
- Over 80% of primary health care clinics have shut down because of damage or a lack of fuel and/or staff. This severely compromises access to health care for everyone, but particularly young children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, older persons, persons with disabilities and patients with non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
- There are an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and more than 180 giving birth every day in the most appalling conditions; most without access to midwives, doctors or health care facilities. A threefold increase in the miscarriage rate has been reported since the war began, due primarily to displacement, shock and malnutrition.
- 1.8 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes, fleeing to emergency shelters or the homes of family/friends, with many now displaced multiple times.
- A severe water shortage, consumption of contaminated water, massive overcrowding in shelters and breakdown of the vaccination programme have already resulted in a surge in communicable disease reports, with cases of diarrhoea, respiratory tract infections and hepatitis A rising rapidly. There has also been a concerning increase in the number of cases of mumps and meningitis, with potentially devastating outbreaks of typhoid, cholera and measles anticipated.
- Efforts continue to avert the spread of polio after six circulating variant poliovirus strains were detected in environmental samples from Deir al Balah and Khan Younis in late June 2024. Gaza had a vaccination coverage of 99% prior to the war, a rate that has now dropped to 86% due to the “decimation of the health system, lack of security, destruction of infrastructure, mass displacement and shortage of medical supplies,” explained the WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of young children who have been left unvaccinated and unprotected,” he added.
- Critical food shortages have created famine conditions across Gaza, especially in the north. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported a staggering and rapid rise in acute malnutrition levels among children, warning that "there is a high risk that malnutrition rates and deaths from starvation will continue to increase across the Gaza Strip in the absence of more humanitarian assistance and the restoration of essential services".
- Mains electricity has been unavailable since 11th October 2023, with completely inadequate fuel supplies for emergency generators, even at hospitals.
- Since the start of the military operation in Rafah on the 7th May 2024 and the closure of Rafah crossing, the already inadequate delivery/distribution of aid into Gaza has plummeted still further, with only a tiny fraction of the fuel, food, water and medical supplies needed getting in.
Our Immediate Objective:
- To help respond to the current emergency, getting surgical teams and life-saving equipment/supplies into Gaza as soon as possible. Our first team worked at the European Gaza hospital, Khan Younis, for two weeks from 27th December 2023, and we deployed teams to the same hospital for two weeks every month from then until May 2024. We were able to support local colleagues, exhausted and fearful for their families, with the emergency surgical management of survivors of major trauma (predominantly blast and crush injuries), and the subsequent management of patients with complex limb injuries. So many of these patients had lost family members and had devastating, disabling wounds, requiring multiple operations and lifelong rehabilitation. Sadly we have had to cancel our last two missions because of the extremely limited access to Gaza since the closure of Rafah crossing, but we hope to send our next team in for the whole of August 2024 and resume regular missions after that.
A Summary of Our Clinical Activity to Date:
Medium/Longer-Term Objectives:
- To continue regular missions and vital equipment procurement over the next year, with the focus changing post ceasefire from emergency care to longer-term reconstruction and rehabilitation.
- To continue support for the established adult/paediatric trauma and limb reconstruction services, to ensure resilience and robust succession planning.
To support our life-saving work please donate through the link above. Thank you.
