It will take years to clear medical evacuations backlog in Gaza, says WHO

The World Health Organization is warning that the pace of medical evacuations of sick and wounded Palestinians out of Gaza, including several thousand children, is so slow that it will take five to 10 years to clear the backlog at the current rate.

Rik Peeperkorn, the UN global health body’s representative for the West Bank and Gaza, said only 78 out of 12,000 patients requiring evacuation had managed to leave recently.

Among the 12,000, according to Unicef the UN’s children’s agency, are 2,500 children some of whom have died during an often months long wait to leave for hospitals outside.

The Israeli military often takes months to respond to medical evacuation requests, and the number of evacuations has plunged in recent months.

Since the war began on 7 October 2023, 5,230 patients have been evacuated, according to Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson.

But since May, when the southern Rafah border crossing to Egypt was closed that rate has slowed down, with only 342 patients evacuated, she said, an average of less than two a day.

In a rare exception in November, however, 200 seriously injured and ill Palestinians and their carers were evacuated from Gaza, in one of the biggest operations of its kind in months, Israel says.

In some cases, the military rejects either the patient or, in the case of children, the caregivers accompanying them on vague security grounds or with no explanation.

The Israeli decisions appear to be “arbitrary and are not made on a criteria nor logic,” said Moeen Mahmood, the Jordan country director for Doctors Without Borders.

Cogat, the Israeli military agency in charge of humanitarian affairs for Palestinians, said in a statement to the Associated Press that it “makes every effort to approve the departure of children and their families for medical treatments, subject to a security check”.

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A military official said Israel’s internal intelligence service reviews whether the patient or their escort have what he called “a connection to terrorism”, and if one is found they are refused. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential procedures.

In August Doctors without Borders applied with the Israeli military to evacuate 32 children along with their caregivers, but only six were allowed to leave.

In November, it applied for eight others, including a two-year-old with leg amputations, but Israeli authorities blocked evacuation, it said

The military official said five of the eight requests in November were approved but the caregivers trying to travel with the children were rejected on security grounds. The official said Doctors Without Borders would have to resubmit the requests with alternate escorts. The official didn’t say why the other three children weren’t approved.

Additionally Peeperkorn, the WHO’s Peeperkorn said that one of the few remaiming hospitals in northern Gaza was hit by an Israeli attack on Friday that occurred without any prior warning. “There was no official warning or evacuation order before the bombing of … the hospital, only rumours that spread panic,” he added.

The director of Kamal Adwan hospital earlier said Israel conducted several attacks on Friday that hit the facility, one of the last functioning health centres in the northern area.

Four hospital staff were among “a large number of” wounded and dead, according to the statement.

“There was a series of airstrikes on the northern and western sides of the hospital, accompanied by intense and direct fire,” Hussam Abu Safia said.

Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 44,612 Palestinians and wounded 104,834 since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian territory’s health ministry said on Friday.

Agencies contributed to this report