War and disease could kill 85,000 Gazans in six months
An escalation of the war in Gaza could lead to the deaths of 85,000 Palestinians from injuries and diseases over the next six months, under the worst of three scenarios that leading epidemiologists have predicted. have modeled in an attempt to understand the conflict's potential future death toll.
These fatalities would add to the more than 29,000 deaths in Gaza that local authorities have attributed to the conflict since the conflict began in October. The estimate represents “excess deaths,” more than would have been expected if there had been no war.
In a second scenario, assuming there is no change in the current level of fighting or humanitarian access, an additional 58,260 deaths could occur in the enclave over the next six months, according to the researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the London School or Hygiene. Tropical medicine.
That figure could rise to 66,720 if outbreaks of infectious diseases such as cholera were to occur, their analysis showed.
Even under the best of the three options the research team described – an immediate and long-term ceasefire without an outbreak of infectious diseases – an additional 6,500 Gazans could die in the next six months as a direct result of the war, he said. emerged from the analysis.
The population of the Gaza Strip before the war was approximately 2.2 million.
“This is not a political message or advocacy,” said Dr. Francesco Checchi, professor of epidemiology and international health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“We simply wanted to put it in people's minds and on the desks of decision makers,” he added, “so that in retrospect it can be said that when these decisions were made, there was some evidence available about how this would play out. in terms of lives.”
Dr. Checchi and his colleagues estimated the expected excess deaths based on health data available for Gaza before the start of the war and on data collected during more than four months of fighting.
Their research looks at deaths from traumatic injuries, infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal causes, and non-communicable diseases for which people can no longer get medicine or treatment, such as dialysis.
Dr. Checchi said the analysis made it possible to quantify the potential impact of a ceasefire on lives. “The decisions that will be taken in the coming days and weeks are of great importance for the evolution of the death toll in Gaza,” he said.
The expected 6,500 deaths, even with a ceasefire, are based on the assumption that no epidemics of infectious diseases will occur. In an outbreak of cholera, measles, polio or meningitis, that number would be 11,580, said Dr. Paul Spiegel, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and author of the study, which was not peer-reviewed.
“The point is that even with a ceasefire we are not out of the woods yet,” he said. “There are still a significant number of deaths, and we have to be prepared for that.”
While it is clear that a military escalation would cause additional casualties, he added, policymakers should be aware of the scale of deaths these scenarios indicate.
“We hope to bring some reality to it,” said Dr. Mirror. “This is 85,000 additional deaths in a population where 1.2 percent of that population has already been killed.”