Gaza’s healthcare system has been decimated by months of horrific Israel’s war [GETTY]
British doctors have warned that the long-term effects of Israel’s war on Gaza could end up quadrupling the Palestinian death toll.
Speaking to The Guardian, Doctors Ghassan Abu-Sittah and Nizam Mamode, both of whom worked in Gaza after the war broke out in October 2023, said the rise of infectious disease, the number of health problems linked to malnutrition and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system meant that the mortality rate would be abnormally high following the ceasefire.
Dr Abu-Sittah said the levels of malnutrition were so high that many children would never recover, saying studies have shown children who survived war were more likely to get non-communicable diseases if they had malnutrition.
“They’re [children] also more likely to become diabetics, more likely to have hypertension, more likely to have diabetes in old age. You don’t recover,” Abu-Sittah said, adding that the long-term effect on Gazans depended on how quickly the enclave is rebuilt.
Dr Mamode said the number of “non-trauma deaths” could be higher than 186,000, a figure that scientists have estimated could be the true Gaza death toll – over three times the 61,707 given by the Gaza health ministry.
Both doctors also spoke of Israel targeting Gaza’s healthcare workers, with Dr Abu-Sittah saying entire medical specialities had been erased from the enclave and training replacements would take up to 10 years.
At the same time, the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, including the sewage system, has helped spread diseases – something Dr Abu-Sittah described when providing evidence to Scotland Yard and the International Criminal Court.
Dr Mamode also spoke of how Israel’s war will psychologically scar Gaza’s population.
“In the coming months, those issues will start to come to the fore, because people have just been focusing on day-to-day survival,” Dr Mamode said.
“When that pressure comes off [the psychological impacts] are going to manifest themselves in all sorts of ways.”
Dr Mamode gave evidence to MPs last year to the British parliament’s international development select committee, where he described Gaza as resembling Hiroshima.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah faced immense difficulty while trying to share his experiences working in the enclave, and was the target of censorship by Germany. He was investigated and slapped with a Schengen-wide travel ban that has since been overturned.
