Tag: Healthcare workers

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How Israel is weaponizing infectious diseases in Gaza by Dr. Salman Khan

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Addressing the growing threat of infectious diseases in Gaza requires bold, urgent action. Firstly, a true ceasefire must be enacted. This includes lifting restrictions on entry of lifesaving medical supplies and medicines, particularly antibiotics. Humanitarian workers must be allowed unimpeded access into Gaza and currently imprisoned healthcare workers must be freed. Patients requiring specialty care must be allowed medical evacuation—many of these patients succumb to infectious complications while awaiting safe passage. Resources must be allocated to rebuilding Gaza’s sanitation infrastructure, healthcare system, and laboratory capacity. Only with these prerequisites in place can hospital infection prevention and control and antimicrobial stewardship programs realize their full potential. Finally, the systems of apartheid and occupation that created the conditions for medicide must be dismantled; Israel must be held accountable for its genocidal actions in Gaza.

Continue reading at https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/how-israel-is-weaponizing-infectious-diseases-in-gaza/

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Patterns of war related trauma in Gaza during armed conflict: survey study of international healthcare workers by Omar El-Taji and colleagues

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The survey collected data on 12 anatomical regions, mechanisms of trauma, and general medical conditions. 78 healthcare workers reported 23 726 trauma related injuries and 6960 injuries related to weapons. The most common traumatic injuries were burns (n=4348, 18.3%), lower limb injuries (n=4258, 17.9%), and upper limb injuries (n=3534, 14.9%). Explosive injuries accounted for most of the weapon related trauma (n=4635, 66.6%), predominantly affecting the head (n=1289, 27.8%), whereas firearm injuries disproportionately affected the lower limbs (n=526, 22.6%). Healthcare workers reported 4188 people with chronic disease across 11 domains requiring long term treatment.

… Healthcare workers reported a total of 5405 general medical and infectious disease presentations. The most common general medical conditions were malnutrition (n=1002, 18.5%) and dehydration (n=865, 16.0%), reported by 59 (76%) and 54 healthcare workers (69%), respectively. Fifty four healthcare workers (69%) recorded sepsis in 631 patients with injury (11.7%), and 47 (60%) recorded gastroenteritis in 986 (18.2%). Healthcare workers reported 4188 people presenting to hospitals with chronic disease requiring long term treatment (see supplementary tables S2.17 and 2.18).

… This international healthcare worker reported survey highlights the scale and complexity of traumatic injuries and medical conditions in Gaza during the ongoing conflict. The volume, distribution, and military grade severity of injuries, indicate patterns of harm that exceed those reported in previous modern-day conflicts. These findings highlight the urgent need for resilient, context specific surveillance systems, designed to function amid sustained hostilities, resource scarcity, and intermittent telecommunications, to inform tailored surgical, medical, psychological, and rehabilitation interventions.

Continue reading at https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj-2025-087524

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UN experts appalled by relentless Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system by UN Special Rapporteurs, Tlaleng Mofokeng and Francesca Albanese

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GENEVA – The targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system by the Israel Defense Forces amounts to “medicide,” UN experts* said today, accusing Israel of deliberately attacking and starving healthcare workers, paramedics and hospitals to wipe out medical care in the besieged enclave.

Continue reading at https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/un-experts-appalled-relentless-israeli-attacks-gazas-healthcare-system

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Break the selective silence on the genocide in Gaza by Roberto De Voglia, Jonathan Montomolib, Ghassan Abu-Sitta, Ilan Pappé

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Substantial and well-documented evidence indicates a catastrophic public health emergency in Gaza (appendix pp 1–5), marked by severe food insecurity and alarming levels of malnutrition-related deaths.1 Life expectancy at birth reportedly declined by approximately 35 years in 2024.2 This represents a greater collapse in longevity than that recorded during the genocide in Rwanda, where life expectancy at birth declined from age 42·9 years in 1993 to age 12·2 years in 1994.3

… Starvation is being used repeatedly and relentlessly as a weapon of war.7 Leading human rights organisations, UN agencies, and UN Special Rapporteurs have officially recognised the genocide in Gaza.8 This position is also supported by a broad and distinguished group of genocide scholars.9 However, most public health, medical, and social science associations have either remained silent or issued vague statements—a response that contrasts sharply with their rapid and vocal support in other conflicts, such as with Ukraine.10 This pattern suggests a selectively empathic response: a tendency to express solidarity with people who are perceived as being part of a so-called in-group and neglect those classified as an out-group based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, or geopolitical alignment.11

To challenge this selective silence, we issued an open letter urging professional and academic associations in the fields of health care, public health, and the social sciences to publicly recognise the genocide in Gaza and to revise their official positions accordingly (appendix pp 6–20).12 Within days, the letter gathered over 3300 signatures, including 1300 from academics and professionals. Moreover, the initiative prompted three major public health associations—the European Public Health Alliance, the European Public Health Associations, and the World Federation of Public Health Association, who represent over 5 million health professionals globally—to issue a joint statement acknowledging the genocide.13

Continue reading at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2825%2901541-7/fulltext

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The Shame of Israeli Medicine by Neve Gordon, Guy Shalev, and Osama Tanous

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

This and other genocidal calls were not limited to the first weeks and months after the October 7 massacre. Nineteen months into the war on Gaza, Amos Sabo, a senior surgeon at Maccabi Healthcare Services, posted on X that he considered his reserve service a way of advancing public health by “eliminating cockroaches and other loathsome insects.” A few months earlier he wrote: “Gaza should be erased. There are no uninvolved people there.”

… It is hard not to conclude that the IMA has failed grievously in its obligations to defend medical ethics. It could have criticized Israeli doctors who posted genocidal messages on social media, investigated health professionals who allegedly facilitated torture, and defended Palestinian doctors like Abed Samara who were wrongly persecuted for supporting terror. Instead it has not just turned a blind eye to these abuses but adopted Israel’s line of defense, blaming Hamas for Israeli transgressions in Gaza that include not only egregious crimes of starvation, murder, and forced displacement—widely acknowledged by rights groups as amounting to genocide—but more specifically the destruction of the Strip’s medical system, the killing of more than 1,400 health care workers, and the unlawful detention of nearly four hundred others. 

Continue reading at https://archive.md/2025.05.31-125201/https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/05/31/the-shame-of-israeli-medicine/

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A Renewed War on Gaza’s Hospitals: Israel Disables Them with Blood and Fire by Mohammad al-Naami

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

After the Israeli withdrawal from the hospital, Gaza’s Civil Defense announced the discovery of mass graves in the vicinity of the Nasser Hospital, containing bodies that showed signs of torture and being buried alive, including children. 

Civil Defense teams recovered 392 bodies from three graves around the hospital. Fifty-eight percent of the remains were unidentified, with some found bound or missing limbs, and IV drips still attached to the corpses—further reinforcing suspicions that some victims were buried while still alive. 

Meanwhile, Ismail Al-Thawabta, Director of the Gaza Media Office, confirmed that the Israeli army executed hundreds of displaced persons, wounded, and patients inside the Nasser Hospital during its siege and raid.

Continue reading at https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1657366

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Under Relentless Israeli Bombing and Lacking Everything, a Gaza Hospital Is Triaging Genocide by Abubaker Abed

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Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah is a place of concentrated horror and suffering. There is not a moment of tranquility here. A constant stream of ambulances rush in loaded with casualties—mostly crushed and charred bodies and dismembered children. The wards echo with the screams of mothers. Sobbing toddlers wander the halls looking for family members. Funeral prayers are held every hour, barely keeping up with the rising number of dead.

The hospital morgue is a charnel house—corpses are piled on top of one another. A thin river of blood flows outside, winding beneath the feet of relatives gathered for a final glance at their loved ones. As they carry mangled bodies to try and find an empty grave in the inundated cemetery nearby, their overlapping wails of grief fill the air. Inside, survivors stand bereft against the walls, praying for an end to the carnage—or for an Israeli airstrike to finally kill them and remove them from this place.

Continue reading at https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/al-aqsa-hospital-gaza-shortages-siege

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Israel’s execution of 15 medical personnel is unprecedented in recent history; crime demands immediate accountability by Euromed Human Rights Monitor

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According to field evidence, Israeli forces killed eight Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, five Civil Defence personnel, and one UNRWA employee; all were on duty at the time of their targeting. The crime has been referred to as “the largest mass execution of humanitarian workers in the history of modern warfare”.Following the total destruction of the workers’vehicles, the majority of their bodies were subsequently interred in a deep pit that was then filled with sand. This horrifying scene serves as further evidence of Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and is a major crime that is a serious breach of international humanitarian law.

The crime is just one of a string of intentional assaults that have been directed at humanitarian and medical workers since 7 October 2023. Since then, Israel has killed over 1,400 medical personnel, 27 Red Crescent paramedics, and 111 Civil Defence personnel as part of a systematic campaign to destroy the Gaza Strip’s health and relief infrastructure to kill Palestinians, while simultaneously aiming to destroy their means of subsistence as well.

Continue reading at https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6665

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They forced me to stand for hours in the cold, arms raised and shackled’: eight Gaza doctors on their Israeli prison ordeal by Hoda Osman, Annie Kelly, Farah Jallad and Aseel Mousa

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

Frankly, no matter how long I talk about what I experienced in detention, it is only a fraction of what truly happened. I am talking about being clubbed, being beaten with rifle butts and being attacked by dogs.

At night I was put back in my cell but they don’t let you sleep ever; the air conditioner is on and they don’t turn the lights off. There are cameras in the cell filming you. It is terrifying. All night you hear the voices of people around you screaming. I saw people who were dying there. Every day is a humiliation, every day is degradation.

Continue reading at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/26/testimony-of-gaza-doctors-israel-prison

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Why did Israel kill the last orthopaedic surgeon in northern Gaza? by Ghada Majadli

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  2. Dr Saeed Joudeh, the only orthopaedic specialist in northern Gaza, was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli quadcopter last Thursday while travelling between Al Awda Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Joudeh was hit directly and died from the injury. He had previously been injured two weeks earlier. Joudeh regularly commuted between the two hospitals to address severe staff shortages. His killing is not merely the loss of a single physician but a calculated act within a broader strategy to incapacitate Gaza’s healthcare system – critical not only for treating injuries but for enabling the population to heal, recover, and sustain resilience.
  3. With Joudeh’s death, the number of medical sector staff killed has now reached 1,057, according to the Ministry of Health. This attack took place amid intensifying assaults on northern Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, which form part of broader practices – such as starvation and attacks on shelters – intended to achieve the “Generals’ plan” of depopulating northern Gaza… These actions are part of a broader strategy to create conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as a collective group, and ensure that Gaza’s population remains unable to recover or rebuild – inflicting long-term harm that extends far beyond immediate deaths.

Continue reading at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-did-israel-kill-last-orthopedic-surgeon-northern-gaza