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Middle East Eye
a day ago
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Opinion: Is Britain finally realising that Palestinian children are human?
After nearly two years of genocide, the UK government is gearing up to accept a contingent of critically ill and injured children from Gaza. But much more is needed, says Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan am a British Egyptian paediatrician who has worked in the National Health Service (NHS) for more than 15 years. During annual trips to Gaza, I have worked alongside local doctors and witnessed first-hand the impact of Israel's blockade and bombardment on children's health. I know what it means to see children die of preventable causes. But never in my life have I witnessed this level of calculated cruelty, nor such cold complicity from those who claim to care about international law and children's rights. On 30 July, I flew with a 15-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza named Majd Alshagnobi, his mother and two siblings from Cairo to London for specialist treatment at the Great Ormond Street children's hospital. Two of his other siblings and their father remain trapped in northern Gaza. I joined the flight as a friend and supporter of Project Pure Hope, working alongside Kinder Relief, both of which played a vital role in arranging Majd's care in Egypt and helping secure his transfer to the UK. Their work is a testament to what small networks of determined people can achieve when governments fail to act. Majd's mandible had been shattered by a bomb blast. An obvious scar across his neck marks the site of a tracheostomy performed in a hospital in Gaza under siege. His survival is a testament not just to urgent evacuation, but to the relentless efforts of Gaza's doctors and his family, who fought to keep him alive under impossible conditions. It should never take a teenager with a broken face and a scarred airway to remind Britain that Palestinian children are human beings. But that is where we are. A medical worker checks the pulse of a prematurely born baby lying in an infant incubator in Khan Younis, Gaza, 13 January 2025 (Bashar Taleb/AFP)
Middle East Eye
a day ago
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Is Britain finally realising that Palestinian children are human?
I am a British Egyptian paediatrician who has worked in the National Health Service (NHS) for more than 15 years. During annual trips to Gaza, I have worked alongside local doctors and witnessed first-hand the impact of Israel's blockade and bombardment on children's health. I know what it means to see children die of preventable causes. But never in my life have I witnessed this level of calculated cruelty, nor such cold complicity from those who claim to care about international law and children's rights. On 30 July, I flew with a 15-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza named Majd Alshagnobi, his mother and two siblings from Cairo to London for specialist treatment at the Great Ormond Street children's hospital. Two of his other siblings and their father remain trapped in northern Gaza. I joined the flight as a friend and supporter of Project Pure Hope, working alongside Kinder Relief, both of which played a vital role in arranging Majd's care in Egypt and helping secure his transfer to the UK. Their work is a testament to what small networks of determined people can achieve when governments fail to act. Majd's mandible had been shattered by a bomb blast. An obvious scar across his neck marks the site of a tracheostomy performed in a hospital in Gaza under siege. His survival is a testament not just to urgent evacuation, but to the relentless efforts of Gaza's doctors and his family, who fought to keep him alive under impossible conditions. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters It should never take a teenager with a broken face and a scarred airway to remind Britain that Palestinian children are human beings. But that is where we are. Majd is one of the lucky few. Thousands of other critically ill or injured children are still trapped in Gaza, because the UK has refused them visas - offering entry instead to a couple of children with congenital conditions, while those with blast injuries, amputations, renal failure and malnutrition were left behind. It is a policy so shameful it defies explanation, except as part of the same system of dehumanisation that starves children on camera while Britain wrings its hands and does nothing. Hidden cost Majd had to leave behind two siblings and his father in northern Gaza, living in makeshift tents on the beach. For so many families in Gaza, every departure carries not just the relief of survival, but the heavy uncertainty of when - or if - they will ever be reunited. This is the hidden cost of every evacuation: survival split into pieces, families torn apart at checkpoints, children forced to carry both hope and loss in the same small body. Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war Project Pure Hope has stepped into this void, piecing together lifelines child by child, case by case, against a bureaucracy designed to make them disappear. I have seen this organisation fight for every visa, every hospital bed, every safe passage. Every evacuation is a triumph, but also an indictment: of a government that sells arms to the very state that made this flight necessary, and of British institutions that have built the scaffolding of disbelief that enables genocide to unfold before our eyes. That small, ordinary joy - a giggle on an escalator, the grip of a brother's hand - became an act of quiet resistance This week, the Guardian reported that around 100 critically ill and injured children in Gaza may finally be evacuated to the UK for NHS treatment under a new government scheme - the result of tireless efforts by groups like Project Pure Hope. But with dozens of children having already died while waiting, this must be the start of a sustained, government-funded programme - not a one-off gesture to quiet public outrage. For several months, the faces of starving children in Gaza have flooded British media: emaciated infants with hollow eyes, toddlers too weak to cry, teenagers like Majd with their bodies torn apart. It was as though the UK media had suddenly discovered that Palestinian children exist. But for those of us who have spoken daily with doctors inside Gaza, who have begged governments and professional bodies to act, these horrors are not new. Rather, this situation is the inevitable outcome of a deliberate campaign of dehumanisation - one that has been sanctioned by British mainstream media, shielded by the British government, and carried out by an apartheid state with total impunity. Would this be happening if the victims were Israeli children? Ukrainian children? British children? Of course not. But Palestinian lives, and especially Palestinian children, have been treated as disposable - either invisible or demonised. Discovering a new world Every scar on Majd's face tells the story of a system. It is a system that licences the bombs that shatter mandibles; a system that starves hospitals of medicine and fuel; a system that offers platitudes while refusing visas to the very children it has helped wound. The starvation of Gaza, the amputations, the broken jaws - none of this is a glitch. It is the system. And yet, just hours before we boarded the plane, I saw something the system cannot touch. For Majd and his siblings, it was their first time in an airport. Wide-eyed, they clutched their mother's hands as we entered the terminal. And then, like children everywhere, they were drawn to the moving escalators. They jumped on them, laughing, racing to see who could reach the top first, their voices echoing in the cavernous hall. For a few precious minutes, the war receded, and they were just kids discovering a new world - doing the same things any child in any country would do. The UK must act now to save Gaza's children Read More » That small, ordinary joy - a giggle on an escalator, the grip of a brother's hand - became an act of quiet resistance. It was a reminder that these children's innocence, their playfulness, their ability to imagine a future beyond rubble and checkpoints, is itself a form of steadfastness. Israel can destroy homes, starve families and bomb hospitals. It can try to grind people down to rubble and statistics. But it cannot touch what I saw in that airport concourse: the wonder in a child's eyes, the laughter that can break through months of terror - the determination to live, written in the simple act of play. Their resistance is their existence. Every giggle, every question about cartoons or swings, every toy carried across borders is an act of defiance. These children carry not just their own survival, but the survival of a people. We owe them more than charity. We owe them justice. That means opening Britain's doors immediately to every critically injured child in Gaza, and scaling this work at speed. It means establishing a government-funded evacuation and treatment scheme - the same level of national mobilisation afforded to Ukrainian refugees - with the infrastructure, capacity and expertise that are already in place. It means ending the arms sales that make their wounds inevitable. It means confronting the racism that has rendered their lives negotiable. And it means tearing down the system that deems some lives worth saving and others worth erasing. As the flight continued, Majd sat quietly with his siblings, their small hands wrapped around the few belongings they had brought from Gaza. Watching them, I realised that no matter what is destroyed - homes, hospitals, whole neighbourhoods - there is something Israel will never break: their innocence, their resistance, their steadfastness, and their determination to exist. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
100 Gaza children hope to be evacuated to UK for urgent medical care
More than 100 critically ill and injured children in Gaza hope to come to the UK as soon as possible after the government announced a scheme to provide those in severe need with NHS care. The government announced on Sunday that it would evacuate children from Gaza to the UK for treatment under a scheme to be announced within weeks. While campaigners welcomed the announcement, they urged ministers to move quickly, saying children awaiting urgent medical care in the UK had died waiting, or were forced to be medically evacuated to other countries. 'We have previously had children on the list but because approval takes so long, some of those children have ended up dying,' said Omar Din, a co-founder of Project Pure Hope (PPH) and a healthcare executive in NHS primary care. 'The government needs to move at pace.' Through a private scheme, the charity has brought three children to the UK this year. Now, its efforts will provide a blueprint for the new taxpayer-funded scheme, which will operate in parallel. 'It's not too late in the sense that there are people who can still be helped, there are many children,' Din said. But he added: 'We should have done this much sooner.' The UK's decision to offer itself as a receiving state comes as starvation and famine from Israel's aid blockade take hold in Gaza, where more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated as many as 12,500 patients in Gaza require medical evacuation, and humanitarian organisations have called on more countries to assist. Last month, a charity launched legal action against the government's decision not to provide medical evacuations against historical precedent, and ministers faced increased pressure from more than 100 MPs to act. Charities hope that about 100 children on their existing lists will be permitted to come to the UK, along with a guardian and possibly siblings. PPH has told the government it has between 30 and 50 children who should come to the UK, and the charity Children Not Numbers (CNN) has 60 children in critical need of medical evacuation from Gaza. Charities said there were many people – working in healthcare and other sectors – who were willing to donate their time and money to help. 'We have a thriving private healthcare system in addition to our NHS system, and combined with the government behind them, I think services can be expanded to support a greater number of children,' said Din. Looking to counterparts in Europe and the US, and the neighbouring countries Egypt, Qatar and the UAE, which had evacuated more than 7,000 patients as of April, according to the WHO, Din said the UK government should assist children 'relative to our counterparts'. One child the charity was assisting had fourth-degree burns to 40% of his body. However, discussions with the government over bringing the child to the UK moved too slowly, the charity said, and the child ended up being taken to Italy in June, along with a one-year-old boy with a congenital disease. The charity has also assisted medical evacuations to the UAE and Jordan. 'We've now developed a blueprint, we've got all the resources [and] learning. The whole pathway is there now for you to take and use the full force of government to scale [up] urgently,' said Din. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Last month, CNN took legal action against the Home Office and Foreign Office over their decision not to provide medical evacuations. Welcoming the government's announcement, a spokesperson said 71 children they were assisting had died due to insufficient treatment, medicine and delays to medical evacuations, since they first called on the prime minister to consider such a scheme in November last year. 'This is absolutely disheartening,' said a CNN spokesperson. 'We had to wait around 10 months for it to happen.' The charity said the 60 children it had in critical need of evacuation had their paperwork and medical records ready for final review from Israel's coordinator of government activities in the territories (Cogat). Médecins Sans Frontières has previously called on the Israeli government to allow more patients to leave Gaza, and be more flexible, saying cases faced a lot of Cogat rejections. 'We are ready to go as long as we have the green light from the government,' said the CNN spokesperson. A Foreign Office spokesperson said a cross-government taskforce had been created to pull the new scheme together as quickly as possible. 'We are taking forward plans to evacuate more children from Gaza who require urgent medical care, including bringing them to the UK for specialist treatment where that is the best option for their care,' they said.
The National
5 days ago
- Health
- The National
UK taskforce set up to bring injured children from Gaza
The UK will bring injured children from Gaza to NHS hospitals for treatment, after more than a year of campaigning by doctors. As many as 300 children could be taken from Gaza and treated in NHS hospitals, according to reports, with a government representative confirming on Monday they were 'taking plans forward'. Doctors and Palestinian families in the UK have campaigned for injured children to be taken to the UK since 2023 and were ready to pay for the treatment. Three children have made the journey, with the third, 15-year old Majd Al Shagnobi, arriving last week for privately-funded facial reconstruction surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Existing blueprint The government's plan builds on the work of Project Pure Hope, a UK charity which brought those three children from Gaza. The charity had raised enough money to bring up to 50 Gazan children to the UK for treatment, but faced obstacles under the UK's slow moving visa process. Instead, they began moving children from Gaza to hospitals in Italy and other parts of Europe. It took 17 months for the charity to bring its first two children from Gaza to the UK. Project Pure Hope will become part of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office task force. Omar Din, a co-founder of Project Pure Hope, said the charity's experience of triage in Gaza and co-ordinating evacuations with international agencies could help the government speed up cases, medical clearances and safe transfers. 'We've done a of groundwork already and we'll be sharing those details. We're asking them to take it as a blueprint,' he told The National. 'We'd be keen to share what worked well, what didn't work well.' UK hospitals are likely to be sought for treating severe burns, limb salvage surgery, trauma centres and conditions that have gone unmanaged for a long time such as diabetes, Mr Din said. The UK also has world leading centres for neuro-rehabilitation. Doctors and hospitals across the UK have long called for children from Gaza to come for treatment, and many UK-based medical professionals are travelling to the strip to support the work of hospitals there. 'We get several people contacting us every day, across communities in the UK, saying they want to help,' Mr Din said. The full details of the plan will be announced in the coming weeks, but it has been suggested that the children would be treated on the NHS, with one parent or guardian accompanying them, and with security checks made by the Foreign Office. Treatment on the NHS would also allow the patients to access treatment across the health system. 'When it's the NHS you've got the entire force available to you,' Mr Din said. Project Pure Hope's privately-funded evacuations will continue in parallel with the government scheme. Fast-tracking required It comes amid overwhelming public pressure for the government to take strong measures to end the war in Gaza, and address the famine. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last week that the UK was 'urgently accelerating' efforts to bring injured children to the UK, days after he announced terms for the conditional recognition of a Palestinian state sometime in September. More than 50,000 children are estimated to have been killed or injured in Gaza since October 2023, according to Unicef. There are concerns as to whether the UK can ask quickly enough to take evacuate children from Gaza who have urgent needs. Majd spent a year in Gaza with his injuries before he could be moved to Egypt in February of this year. The Israeli tank shell that shattered his jaw has left him unable to smile, talk or eat properly in that time. It was common for children on evacuation lists to die of their injuries or to be killed in a later attack before they had the chance to travel, Mr Din said. The UK had responded to calls in May to evacuate two children, Hatem, a two-year-old orphan with 35 per cent burns, and Karam, aged one, who suffered from an easily treatable birth defect. But they acted too slowly and Italy offered to take the two children, alongside 15 others, in an emergency evacuation on 11 June, Mr Din said. Scottish First Minister John Swinney welcomed the reported plans, but he said he regretted the action did not come sooner. The SNP leader said he had written to Mr Starmer on July 9 urging such action to be taken. 'If the UK government is prepared to evacuate Palestinians for medical treatment it would be entirely welcome. 'My only regret is the UK government has taken this long to act. 'I urge the UK government to do everything in its power to move swiftly so that lives can be saved. And Scotland will play our part.' Labour MP Stella Creasy, who also wrote a letter to the Prime Minister last month urging the treatment of Palestinian children in the UK, said: 'Nobody can see the plight of these children and not be moved, and therefore they need us to move now to provide life-saving and life-changing treatment – the sooner we treat them the more chance of good outcomes. A UK government representative said: 'We are taking forward plans to evacuate more children from Gaza who require urgent medical care, including bringing them to the UK for specialist treatment where that is the best option for their care. 'We are working at pace to do so as quickly as possible, with further details to be set out in due course.'
Gulf Today
5 days ago
- Health
- Gulf Today
300 terribly sick Gaza children to be evacuated to UK for treatment
Hundreds of seriously ill children from Gaza will be evacuated to the UK for treatment by the NHS, as part of a new plan due to be announced within weeks, according to a report. Up to 300 young people will enter the UK for free medical care, a scheme which will run in parallel with another similar operation run by the Project Pure Hope group, a senior Whitehall source told The Times. Since the war began in October 2023, only three children from Gaza have been issued medical visas for the UK, under the Project Pure Hope scheme, which is funded entirely by private donations. The news comes amid a starvation crisis in the ravaged Gaza Strip, where partial and complete Israeli blockades on aid have been behind more than 160 malnutrition-related deaths, including 92 children, health authorities in Gaza say. Ted Chaiban, Unicef's deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations, said on Friday that more than 320,000 young children are at risk of acute malnutrition, after a recent trip to Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Demonstrators stage a protest in solidarity with the people of Gaza and Palestinian detainees, in Ramallah on Sunday. Agence France-Presse The malnutrition indicator in Gaza has 'exceeded the famine threshold', Chaiban said in a statement. 'Horrifying images' Last month, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer promised to evacuate badly injured children. He wrote in The Mirror: 'I know the British people are sickened by what is happening. The images of starvation and desperation in Gaza are utterly horrifying. 'We are urgently accelerating efforts to evacuate children from Gaza who need critical medical assistance – bringing more Palestinian children to the UK for specialist medical treatment.' More than 100 MPs have signed a letter calling for the government to fast-track the scheme, The Times reports. Labour backbench MP Stella Creasy said: 'The commitment we all share to help these children remains absolute and urgent – with every day, more are harmed or die, making the need to overcome any barriers to increasing the support we give them imperative. 'We stand ready to support whatever it takes to make this happen and ask for your urgent response.' Israel denies there is widespread starvation and says that where there is significant hunger in the Strip, it is a result of the theft of aid by Hamas and of failure by the UN to successfully deliver aid. But Unrwa, which was once the largest provider of humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, says it has been entirely sidelined. Commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said on Friday that the group has 6,000 trucks loaded with aid stuck waiting outside Gaza for Israel to give it the green light to enter. Israel considers the disarmament of Hamas a key condition for any deal to end the conflict, but Hamas has repeatedly said it is not willing to lay down its weapons. The Independent
