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, in the worst of three situations 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 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, director of the Hopkins Center for the Humanitarian Health and author of the study, which was not peer-reviewed.

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.”

Patrick Ball, an expert on quantitative analysis of conflict deaths who was not involved in the study, said it was unusual to see such a rigorous attempt to calculate the potential humanitarian costs of an ongoing war.

“The article highlights this conflict in a way that we have not seen in any previous conflict,” says Dr. Ball, research director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a nonprofit organization. “It highlights the likely costs in human life and suffering of various types of future actions under human control.”

“People are going to make decisions that will lead to one of these three scenarios, or a complex mix of them, and this gives us an idea of ​​what the likely outcomes of those decisions are,” he added.

The analysis predicts that fatalities from traumatic injuries in Gaza will be distributed across all ages and genders over the next six months.

“Forty-three percent of trauma deaths occur among women, and 42 percent among children under the age of 19,” the paper says, which “reflects the intensity and widespread nature of bombing.”

Even with an immediate ceasefire, war-related deaths would continue, according to the analysis. The toll includes the deaths of people who succumbed to previous injuries or were injured by unexploded ordnance, the deaths of infants and women for whom complex care during childbirth is not possible, and the deaths of malnourished children who are not in able to fight infections such as pneumonia.

“I don’t think people realize how long it will take for that to change,” said Dr. Mirror.