Gaza: “No health system left,” says MSF

The healthcare system in Gaza is no longer functioning, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières has told the UN Security Council in a strongly worded speech.

In a briefing to the UN on 22 February,1 MSF’s secretary general, Christopher Lockyear, said, “There is no health system to speak of left in Gaza. Israel’s military has dismantled hospital after hospital. What remains is so little in the face of such carnage.

“The excuse given is that medical facilities have been used for military purposes, yet we have seen zero independently verified evidence of this . . . Instead of adherence to international law, we see the systematic disabling of hospitals. This has left the entire medical system inoperable.”

The principals of the UN’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee, who include the World Health Organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, “The health system continues to be systematically degraded, with catastrophic consequences.”

As of 19 February, WHO said that only 12 of 36 hospitals with inpatient capacity were still functioning—and only partly, and that there had been more than 370 attacks on Gaza’s healthcare facilities since 7 October.2 WHO said, “Diseases are rampant. Famine is looming. Water is at a trickle. Basic infrastructure has been decimated. Food production has come to a halt. Hospitals have turned into battlefields. One million children face daily traumas.” WHO called for an immediate ceasefire and protection of civilians and the infrastructure they rely on.

Lockyear told the UN that MSF was “appalled” by the “willingness of the US to use its powers as a permanent UN Council member to obstruct efforts to adopt the most evident of resolutions: one demanding an immediate and sustained ceasefire.”

“Three times this council has had an opportunity to vote for the ceasefire that is so desperately needed, and three times the US has used its veto power, most recently this Tuesday,” Lockyear said. “A new draft resolution by the US ostensibly calls for a ceasefire. However, this is misleading at best.”

A report published on 19 February by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health estimated that even if an immediate permanent ceasefire were to come into force there would be 6550 excess deaths in the coming months to 6 August, mainly because of the time needed to improve water, sanitation, and shelter conditions; reduce malnutrition; and restore functioning healthcare services.3 But if no ceasefire was established, and the war continued or escalated, the researchers projected that the number of excess deaths would rise to between 58 260 and 74 290—with traumatic injuries and infectious diseases being the main causes of additional fatalities in both scenarios. The authors emphasised that this assumed there would be no outbreaks of infectious diseases such as cholera, which would substantially raise excess deaths further.

Gaza’s health ministry has reported that as of 22 February at least 29 410 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and 69 465 injured.4