Though there are thousands of children in Gaza currently in need of urgent medical care outside of the strip, Israel’s brutal blockade means that it would take over seven years to complete these evacuations at the current rate, the UN has reported.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) wrote on Wednesday that there are “thousands of families” being deprived of health care due to Israel systematically dismantling the health system in Gaza.
At least 2,500 children need urgent care, but with “almost no medical evacuation available” because Israel is allowing so few people to evacuate, many of the children in need are “already losing their lives,” UNRWA wrote.
The UN says these children are suffering from illnesses like cancer, as well as injuries like head trauma, amputations, burns and starvation. Many require specialized care, while others require care that is simply no longer available in Gaza due to Israel’s genocidal assault.
“These children deserve protection, safety, and a future. They deserve a #CeasefireNow,” UNRWA said.
The agency was citing a statistic from UNICEF, which has reported that Israel is only allowing an average of one evacuation of a medically vulnerable child a day, meaning that it would take years to obtain care for children currently in need — not to mention the growing number of children needing medical attention after being injured by Israeli attacks each day.
According to UNICEF, hundreds of children were being evacuated each month in the first four months of 2024. But after Israel seized Rafah in May — something U.S. officials once claimed was a red line — and shut down the border crossing, only 22 children per month have been evacuated on average. As of the end of October, only 127 children had been evacuated since the Rafah closing, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder has said.
“Children in Gaza are dying — not just from the bombs, bullets and shells that strike them — but because, even when ‘miracles happen’, even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount, but the children survive, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza to receive the urgent care that would save their lives,” said Elder.
Elder shared the story of a 12-year-old child, Mazyona, whose siblings were killed when rockets struck her home in Gaza. She lived, but suffered severe injuries to her face and needs a medical evacuation to remove shrapnel in her neck and receive surgery to rebuild her face structure. Israel has denied her medical evacuation four times.
Four-year-old Elia, meanwhile, has received approval for medical evacuation for fourth-degree burns and blood poisoning, the UNICEF spokesperson shared. But because the list of cases is so long, Elia is trapped in Gaza, her mother dead from her own burn injuries, and doctors have warned that they will have to amputate her hand and leg if she isn’t evacuated soon, after having already amputated fingers from one of her hands.
“It is not known how many child patients have been rejected for medevac. Only a list of approved patients is provided by Israel’s COGAT — which controls Gaza’s entry and exit points. The status of others is not shared,” Elder said. “When a patient is denied, there is nothing that can be done. Trapped in the grip of an indifferent bureaucracy, children’s pain is brutally compounded.”
Israeli forces have especially targeted children in their genocide. Last week, UNRWA reported that Gaza is now home to the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world due to Israel’s assault.
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