War and disease could kill 85,000 Palestinians in Gaza in 6 months

An escalation of the war in the Gaza Strip could lead to deaths 85,000 Palestinians for injuries and illnesses over the next six months, in the worst of three scenarios that leading public health researchers have modeled in an effort to understand the possible number of deaths in the future. of the conflict.

These deaths they would unite to the more than 29,000 deaths in Gaza that local authorities have attributed to the conflict since the beginning of October. The estimate represents an “excess death toll,” higher than what would have been expected if there had been no war.

In a second scenario, assuming no change in the current level of fighting or humanitarian access, there could be 58,260 additional deaths in the enclave over the next six months, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the School of Hygiene and Health. . Tropical medicine.

That number could increase to 66,720 if infectious disease outbreaks such as occur angerfound his analysis.

Even under the best of three possibilities outlined by the research team (an immediate and prolonged ceasefire without infectious disease outbreaks), another 6,500 Palestinians in Gaza could die in the next six months as a direct result of the war, he said. analysis found.

The population of the Gaza Strip before the war was approximately 2.2 million.

“This is not a political message or promotion,” said Francesco Checchi, professor of epidemiology and international health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“We just wanted to put it in people’s minds and on the desks of decision makers,” he added, “so that you can then say that when these decisions were made, there was evidence available about how they would be carried out.” develop in terms of lives.”

Estimates

Checchi and his colleagues estimated the expected excess deaths based on health data available for Gaza before the war began and that collected over more than four months of fighting.

Their study considers deaths due to traumatic injuries, infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal causes, and noncommunicable diseases for which people can no longer receive medications or treatments, such as dialysis.

Checchi said the analysis made it possible to quantify the potential impact of a ceasefire on human lives.

“The decisions that will be made in the coming days and weeks are very important in terms of the evolution of the death toll in Gaza,” he said.

The prediction of 6,500 deaths even in the event of a ceasefire is based on the assumption that infectious disease epidemics will not occur.

With an epidemic of cholera, measles, polio or meningitis, that number would be 11,580, said Dr. Paul Spiegel, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an author of the research, which has not been compared with . colleagues. revised.

“The fact is, even with a ceasefire, we are by no means out of the woods,” he said.

“There are still a significant number of deaths and we must be prepared.”

While it is obvious that a military escalation would result in more casualties, he added, policymakers should be aware of the scale of the death toll indicated by these scenarios.

“We hope to give it some reality,” Spiegel said.

“This is 85,000 additional deaths in a population where 1.2% of the population has already been murdered.”