Healthcare accustomed to operating in war scenarios have described the lesions inflicted in Gaza as more frequent and critical of those seen in the past.
Physical and psychological trauma of unprecedented gravity, also compared to those observed during other wars. Doctors from all over the world who in the last two years have served voluntary service in hospitals in the Gaza Strip have completed questionnaires about the wounds that have been called to cure.
Their answers, collected in a British study published on British Medical JournalThey tell of civilians, in many cases children, victims of unusually serious trauma, for frequency and type, even for eyes and hands that have operated in the war scenarios many times.
The health workers interpeered
For the new study, 78 doctors and nurses experts of traumatology, emergency medicine, pediatrics, anesthesia and intensive care, part of 22 non -governmental organizations and from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, have completed the poll using medical registers compiled between August 2024 and February 2025, within 3 months from the date of their use.
65% of the health workers interviewed had already operated in war zones; The permanence time of each in Gaza was between 2 and 12 weeks, for a total of 322 weeks a total of interventions on the field on the front line.
The most common wounds
The health workers described trauma of unprecedented gravity, especially wounds from complex explosion, wounds from a gunshot and burns. In total, 23,726 trauma injuries were sustained and 6,960 gun wounds. The burns were the most common trauma lesions (18.3%), followed a short distance from leg wounds (17.9%) and arms (14.9%). In 742 cases the trauma lesions concerned ostening cases, in a third of which the mother or fetus died.
Depression, acute stress reactions, suicidal ideation have been reported among the most frequent psychological trauma.
Among the wounds inflicted directly from weapons, 67% concerned injuries resulting from explosions, mainly dependent on the head (28% of cases); The wounds from firearms instead affected the legs above all. The most common general medicine conditions reported were malnutrition and dehydration, followed by sepsis (a discussion of the body to an infection) and gastroenteritis. Among the assisted patients were also 4,188 people with chronic long -term assistance diseases.
Unheard of gravity
In the responses left free, the doctors have often described the lesions as unusually serious, speaking of more arts trauma, open skull fractures and lesions extended to the internal organs, as well as serious burns especially in children.
70% of the doctors reported having treated wounds in two or more anatomical regions and having participated in the rescue in mass killings: 77% reported exposure to 5-10 events of this type and 18% to more than 10 of these scenarios.
The numbers of a genocide
The data publicly available on the military offensive of the Israeli army in Gaza launched after the Hamas armed attacks of 7 October 2023 speak of over 65,000 people killed, including 18,000 minors, and at least 200,000 injured (data from the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip reported by Amnesty International): unarmed civilians who have lost their lives in direct attacks, which in many cases have canceled more family generations in a single episode. But dozens of Palestinians are no longer there and the balance of deaths and injuries could be much more serious.
Fundamental cities, hospitals and infrastructures such as hospitals have been razed to the ground, 9 out of 10 people on a population of almost 2.1 million people have been forced to abandon their homes to move to increasingly restricted and unsuitable areas to live in dignity; More than half a million people are starving from a familiar and avoidable famine, caused by the blocking of international aid by the Israeli army.
On September 16, the United Nations Independent International Investigation Commission declared that the one in progress in Gaza is not only a humanitarian catastrophe, but it is a genocide.
