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Gaza Health Ministry

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This article is about the institution run by Hamas. For the institution run by the Palestinian Authority, see Ministry of Health (Palestine).

Palestinian Ministry of Health - Gaza
Agency overview
Formed2007; 18 years ago (2007)
JurisdictionGovernment of Hamas
HeadquartersGaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
Agency executive

The Gaza Health Ministry (GHM), officially the Palestinian Ministry of Health – Gaza, is responsible for managing healthcare and medical services in the Gaza Strip. The health ministry's casualty reports have received significant attention during the course of the Gaza–Israel conflict. Its numbers have historically been considered reliable by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and Human Rights Watch.[1][2][3] In relation to the Gaza war, two letters published in The Lancet journal did not find evidence of inflation or fabrication of Palestinian casualty numbers.[4][5] A peer-reviewed analysis published by The Lancet in January 2025 concluded the GHM had undercounted deaths due to traumatic injury by 41% in its reports on the Gaza war, with the total estimated traumatic injury deaths as of October 2024 probably exceeding 70,000 as opposed to the GHM's reported 41,909—59.1% of them being women, children and the elderly.[6]

History

The Palestinian territories are served by parallel ministries of health operating in Gaza and the West Bank, overseen by a single government ministry of health based in Ramallah. Following Hamas' takeover of Gaza in 2007, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip has appointed its own alternate health ministers, but the PA retains power over it, paying salaries and supplying it with medical equipment.[7][8]

A month-long doctors' strike ensued after Hamas' takeover of Gaza, due to political disputes. The new Gaza government, with Basem Naim as Health Minister, replaced Fatah-affiliated hospital directors and staff with those identifying with Hamas. Jomaa Alsaqqa, a 20-year surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, lost his job due to his Fatah support and faced arrests and assaults since the Hamas takeover. In response, Naim stated "the hospital managers weren't fired for political reasons: they were fired because of managerial, financial, and moral corruption in the hospitals."[8] In 2023 officials said the ministry is a mix of recent Hamas hires and older civil servants affiliated with the secular nationalist Fatah party.[7]

The current director-general of the Gaza Health Ministry is Medhat Abbas.[9]

On 17 November 2023, amid the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières in Palestine stated the Gaza Health Ministry had been "decimated", and Gaza's health sector had been "systematically destroyed".[10]

Casualty reports

Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) fatality reportage deviation 2008–2021.[7]
Conflict According to GHM According to the UN Deviation
Gaza War (2008–2009) 1,440 1,385 4.0%
2014 Gaza War 2,310 2,251 2.6%
2021 Israel–Palestine crisis 260 256 1.6%

As of 26 October 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) was the sole official source of data on Palestinian casualties in Gaza during the Gaza war,[11] although these numbers are also published by the West Bank-based Palestinian health ministry, which confirms them with its Gaza-based staff.[7] The health ministry's numbers have historically been considered reliable by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch.[1][2][3] The United States Department of State cited its numbers in a public report in March 2023.[3][12]

The casualty figures provided by the ministry do not distinguish the difference between civilians and combatants or provide the cause of death. The percentage of civilian deaths is only calculated post-conflict by the UN and various rights groups.[7]

Methodology

The sources for the GHM casualty data include death counts from hospitals, media reports (subsequently denied by the ministry) and a publicly available online form which allows families to record deaths.[13][14]

The GHM released a full list of the people killed at the time since 7 October, a 200-page document with 6,747 identified individuals listing their names, ages, and ID number as well as 281 unidentified victims. Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said "the numbers coming out of the ministry are not beyond reason", and noted a grey area in differentiating combatants from civilians among the dead, as well as emphasized that immediately released figures may often be different from those ultimately based on recorded data.[15]

Palestinian political analyst Nour Odeh has asserted the process of issuing death certificates is not done by political figures, but by health professionals, insisting "this process enables families to deal with issues such as inheritance and custody of children whose parents have died."[16] Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Ahmed al-Kahlot, denied that the GHM was unduly influenced by Hamas' control, stating that "Hamas is one of the factions. Some of us are aligned with Fatah, some are independent." and "More than anything, we are medical professionals."

As of February 29th, the Gaza Health Ministry stated that its daily tallies now rely upon "a combination of accurate death counts from hospitals that are still partially operating, and on estimates from media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza", but did not "cite or say which sources those are."[14] On March 31st, it stated that 15,070 fatalities (45.8% of the then total) had been compiled via "reliable media sources" instead of direct reporting.[17][18] The Ministry further clarified in reports made on April 1st and April 4th that it had “incomplete data” for 12,263 (later reduced 11,371) of its 33,091 reported fatalities.[19][20]

The methodology for the counts was explained in more detail by Zaher al Wahaid in an article in April.[21] Only three of the eight hospitals responsible for collating deaths were still contributing data. Reports from journalists and first responders contributed to the number of unidentified bodies in the count of recorded deaths. A new system enables Palestinians to report a death using a computer form or the phone, these are counted as identified bodies; they are subtracted from the number of unidentified bodies and do not contribute to the total recorded deaths. Most of those (55%) identified by the forms are men, Mr al Wahaidi said this is because it is mainly used by widows, who must register the deaths to receive government assistance.

The methodology was expanded on by Zaher Al Wahaidi in August 2024.[22][23] He said 'reliable media sources' was a mistranslation, they don't depend on the press. He said all functional hospitals were now reconnected to the database and data no longer needed to be transcribed from notes. It is possible for a family to give details on the online form about whether a body was received by a hospital and since July of these 55% passed through a hospital, 22% were buried without reaching a hospital, and 23% were missing or presumed under the rubble. The database is only updated if the death is confirmed by a judge and was a casualty of the war, and a new death is recorded if the death is confirmed to have not gone through the hospital system. The system had enabled them to cut the number of unidentified deaths from 46% on 31st March to 18% on 6th August.

According to Al Wahaidi, many of the names added to the online form turned out to be inaccurate and were subsequently removed from the published updates.[13]

Analysis by academic researchers

Two letters published in The Lancet found that the GHM numbers were plausible and credible: the first was authored by scholars at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the second by scholars at Johns Hopkins University.[24] The Johns Hopkins University letter verified GHM reported deaths by looking at the UNRWA's reported deaths of its staff members.[4] The UNRWA reported deaths are also publicly available, and independent of the GHM casualty reports. The authors found that the GHM reported death rate (5.3 deaths per 1000) was consistent with data reported by UNRWA (7.8 deaths per 1000, as of 10 November 2023).[4] It also found temporal consistency between the two independent reports.[4]

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine conducted several analyses on the data and concluded it was "implausible" that GHM engaged in data fabrication.[5] The authors found that GHM's reported crude mortality rate in the age bracket of 20-59 years was broadly similar to the mortality rate of UNRWA employees and the mortality rate of Gaza's health-care workers (reported by the World Health Organization).[5] The authors also found that the number of buildings reported damaged by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Public Works was consistent with satellite imagery-based estimates conducted by Sky News (both arrived at the figure of 7%).[5] The authors looked at 7,028 reported deaths (7-26 October), and found only one case of a duplicated identification number and one case of implausible age.[5]

In January 2025 a peer-reviewed analysis of deaths due to traumatic injury in the Israel-Hamas war between October 2023 and 30 June 2024 was published in The Lancet. The research was conducted by scholars from the University of Cambridge, Yale University, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Nagasaki University. The paper utilized a model with "three-list capture–recapture analysis using data from Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH) hospital lists, an MoH online survey, and social media obituaries", and estimated over 70,000 deaths from traumatic injuries as of October 2024, with 59.1% of them being women, children and the elderly. It concluded the GHM's count of trauma-related deaths was too low by about 41%. It also noted that its findings "underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation."[6]

Other analyses

In March 2024 Columbia professor Les Roberts argued that GHM numbers were accurate, citing the two Lancet papers and other data.[24] Professor Michael Spagat of research group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) stated that the GHM provides very detailed and real-time information about casualties in the war, that far exceeds the quality of reporting from conflicts such as Ukraine.[25] He did note that this quality has declined over time, due to Israeli attacks on hospitals, and thus the GHM is relying on first responders and media sources. Writing in April 2024, Spagat also noted the deteriorating quality of data with hundreds of duplicate, missing or invalid IDs, accounting for roughly 1/7 of the total.[25] However in September 2024 he said the GHM had improved the quality and accuracy of its data in its latest report.[26]

According to the AP in June 2024, the ministry's public statements regarding the share of women and children continuing to be the majority part of casualties in April 2024 was contradicted by its own detailed data, which suggested a decline in women and children casualties as a share of casualties.[27] In October 2024 AOAV published a report based on the GHM's latest data concluding that at least 74% of the at the time 40,717 Gazan fatalities identified by the Ministry were civilians, and that even this is likely to be an underestimate.[28]

In October 2024 Nature's News Explainer interviewed several researchers about the difficulties in establishing the death toll in Gaza. Some researchers stated that the numbers published by the GHM underestimate casualties, while an independent Israeli researcher said they are probably overestimated. Those saying it is an underestimate referred to those killed remaining under the rubble, and friends and relatives not knowing they have died so not reporting them as deaths, or not wanting to report their deaths. The independent researcher said the figures in the July list from the ministry's hospital morgue system are likely accurate, but the total figures are probably overestimated as it could include missing people or deaths unrelated to the war. Spagat said the ministry's figures are overall "pretty good" as they include detailed information about most of the deaths.[29]

The analysis of the March 2025 casualty update showed that the ministry removed 3,400 names (including over 1,000 children) that appeared in the earlier lists. According to some researches, this may be due to the intentional manipulation by Hamas.[30][31] Other experts believed that this reflected a normal process of verification.[13]

American and Israeli governments

Historically, the US State Department has relied on the GHM data for its annual human rights reports.[15] For example, it cited GHM numbers in a public report in March 2023.[3] On 26 October 2023, US President Joe Biden stated he had "no confidence" in the casualty numbers being reported.[32][33] Subsequently, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby asserted that the death toll cannot be taken "at face value".[16] However, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs said that actual death toll could be "even higher" than what the GHM reported.[34] On 10 November 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US intelligence community has growing confidence that death toll reports from the Gaza Health Ministry are roughly accurate. The article also reported that despite the growing confidence of US officials, they did not have enough information to confirm for sure.[35]

In January 2024, Israeli news magazine Mekomit reported that Israeli intelligence officials had concluded that Health Ministry casualty reports are generally reliable and are used in briefings to senior officials.[36] In follow-up reporting, an unnamed official told Vice News, "The numbers are heavily relied up for official briefings on civilian casualties because with the exception of strikes on high-value targets, where senior officials are briefed on collateral damage, no civilian casualty figures or estimates are collected [by the Israeli military]."[37]

In June 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment to the annual U.S. State Department appropriations bill that would bar the department from citing casualty figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.[38] Ministry's numbers are, according to The Intercept, likely to be an undercount, as many bodies remain under rubble and so are unaccounted for.[39] The Intercept called the amendment an attempt to conceal Gaza's death toll.[39] The bill has been called by one Democratic staff[who?] as evidence of anti-Palestinian racism in the House, and by US representative Rashida Tlaib as an example of genocide denial.[39]

List of GHM health ministers

# Name Party Time in office
1 Basem Naim[8] Hamas June 2007 – January 2009
2 Mufiz al-Makhalalati[40] Hamas April 2009 – unknown
3 Medhat Abbas Hamas 2023 – present

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "UN says Gaza Health Ministry death tolls in previous wars 'credible'". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 28 November 2023. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  2. ^ a b Harb, Ali. "Gaza death toll from health ministry is 'reliable': Rights expert". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 26 October 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023. Human Rights Watch has been working in the occupied Palestinian territories for three decades. We've covered rounds of escalations and hostilities, and we've always found the numbers from the Ministry of Health to be generally reliable.
  3. ^ a b c d Adam Taylor (24 October 2023). "Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza Health Ministry for death tolls". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 1 December 2023. Retrieved 14 May 2024.
  4. ^ a b c d Huynh, Benjamin Q.; Chin, Elizabeth T.; Spiegel, Paul B. (6 December 2023). "No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health". The Lancet. 403 (10421): 23–24. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02713-7. PMID 38070526. S2CID 265664650. Archived from the original on 5 February 2024. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  5. ^ a b c d e Jamaluddine, Zeina (2023). "Excess mortality in Gaza: Oct 7–26, 2023". The Lancet. 402 (10418): 2189–2190. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02640-5. PMID 38035878. Archived from the original on 30 January 2024. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
  6. ^ a b Jamaluddine, Zeina; Abukmail, Hanan; Aly, Sarah; Campbell, Oona M R; Checchi, Francesco (January 2025). "Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: a capture–recapture analysis". The Lancet. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(24)02678-3.
  7. ^ a b c d e Isabel Debre (26 October 2023). "What is Gaza's Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war's death toll?". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 5 November 2023. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  8. ^ a b c Merav, Sarig (3 November 2007). "Striking medics in Gaza temporarily return to work after talks with Hamas". BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.). 335 (7626). National Institutes of Health: 904–905. doi:10.1136/bmj.39384.458935.DB. PMC 2048866. PMID 17974666.
  9. ^ Daniel, Ari (13 October 2023). "Doctors in Gaza describe the war's devastating impact on health care — and civilians". NPR. Archived from the original on 21 October 2023. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  10. ^ Chotiner, Isaac (17 November 2023). "The Trauma of Gaza's Doctors". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on 30 November 2023. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
  11. ^ David, Folkenflik. "News outlets backtrack on Gaza blast after relying on Hamas as key source". NPR. Archived from the original on 1 December 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  12. ^ Glenn Kessler (1 November 2023). "Biden's dismissal of the reported Palestinian death toll". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 1 November 2023. Retrieved 14 May 2024. The State Department has regularly cited ministry statistics without caveats in its annual human rights reports. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which tracks deaths in the conflict, has found the ministry's numbers to be reliable after conducting its own investigation.
  13. ^ a b c "Hundreds of names removed from official Gaza war death list". Sky News. 5 April 2025. Retrieved 8 May 2025.
  14. ^ a b Batrawy, Aya (29 February 2024) [29 February 2024]. "Gaza's death toll now exceeds 30,000. Here's why it's an incomplete count". www.npr.org. National Public Radio. Archived from the original on 13 April 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
  15. ^ a b McGreal, Chris (26 October 2023). "Can we trust casualty figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 November 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  16. ^ a b "What Experts Say About the Palestinian Death Toll Figures". Time. 26 October 2023. Archived from the original on 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  17. ^ Bermudez, Krystal (9 April 2024). "Hamas-Run Gaza Health Ministry Admits to Flaws in Casualty Data". FDD. Archived from the original on 18 April 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
  18. ^ "Health Sector Emergency Report". Gaza Health Ministry Telegram. State of Palestine Health Ministry - Gaza (published 2 April 2024). 31 March 2024. Archived from the original on 21 April 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
  19. ^ "Health Sector Emergency Report". Telegram. Palestinian Ministry of Health (Gaza) (published 1 April 2024). 3 April 2024. Archived from the original on 18 April 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
  20. ^ "Health Sector Emergency Report". Telegram. Palestinian Ministry of Health (Gaza) (published 4 April 2024). 6 April 2024. Archived from the original on 16 April 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2024.
  21. ^ van der Merwe, Ben (4 April 2024). "Israel-Hamas war: Gaza's morgue network has effectively collapsed - how are they recording their dead?". Sky News. Sky News. Archived from the original on 14 May 2024. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
  22. ^ van der Merwe, Ben; Franks, Josephine; Ní Chúláin, Aisling (15 August 2024). "Gaza conflict: Thousands remain unidentified as death toll reaches 40,000". Sky News. Retrieved 24 August 2024.
  23. ^ Overton, Iain (29 August 2024). "Inside Gaza's graveyard: uncovering the complexities of casualty recording amidst conflict". AOAV. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  24. ^ a b "The Science Is Clear. Over 30,000 People Have Died in Gaza". TIME. 15 March 2024. Archived from the original on 10 April 2024. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
  25. ^ a b Spagat, Mike (17 April 2024). "Analysis of new death data from Gaza's Health Ministry reveals several concerns". Action on Armed Violence. Archived from the original on 21 April 2024. Retrieved 21 April 2024.
  26. ^ Spagat, Michael (24 September 2024). "Tracking Gaza's war death toll: Ministry of Health improves accuracy in latest casualty report". Action on Armed Violence. Retrieved 11 January 2025.
  27. ^ "Takeaways from AP analysis of Gaza Health Ministry's death toll data". AP. 8 June 2024. Archived from the original on 10 June 2024. Retrieved 10 June 2024.
  28. ^ Cockerill, Matthew Ghobrial (28 October 2024). "Civilian casualties in Gaza: Israel's claims don't add up". Action on Armed Violence. Retrieved 11 January 2025.
  29. ^ Mallapaty, Smriti. "Gaza: Why is it so hard to establish the death toll?". Nature. 634 (3 October 2024): 18. doi:10.1038/d41586-024-02508-0.
  30. ^ "Hamas-run health ministry quietly removes thousands from Gaza death toll, researchers find". Euronews. 3 April 2025. Retrieved 8 May 2025.
  31. ^ "The truth about Israel's 'bloodlust' in Gaza". The Spectator. 4 April 2025. Retrieved 8 May 2025.
  32. ^ "Italian minister disputes death toll of Gaza hospital blast". Reuters. Archived from the original on 24 October 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023. The Gaza health ministry has put the death toll at 471. An Israeli official has said the toll appeared to be 'several dozen'. A U.S. intelligence report estimated the number of those killed to be 'probably at the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum'. 'We need to avoid the negative impact of propaganda. Because that missile, which was said to have caused 500 deaths – in reality it was around 50 people – and which inflamed Arab masses in big cities, was not however launched by Israel,' Tajani told the Sky TG24 news channel.
  33. ^ Dobkin, Rachel. "Biden Accuses Palestinians of Lying About Civilian Death Tolls". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 20 November 2023. Retrieved 26 October 2023. What they say to me is that I have no notion the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many are killed ... I'm sure innocents have been killed and it's the price of waging a war ... The Israelis should be incredibly careful to be sure that they're focusing on going after the folks that are propagating this war against Israel and it's against their interest when that doesn't happen but I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.
  34. ^ BBC News, How the dead are counted in Gaza, 16 November 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67347201
  35. ^ Youssef, Nancy A.; Malsin, Jared; Salama, Vivian. "U.S. Officials Have Growing Confidence in Death Toll Reports From Gaza". WSJ. Archived from the original on 10 November 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  36. ^ אברהם, יובל (24 January 2024). "הצבא בדק ומצא שדיווחי ההרוגים במשרד הבריאות בעזה – מהימנים". שיחה מקומית (in Hebrew). Archived from the original on 2 March 2024. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
  37. ^ Prothero, Mitchell (25 January 2024). "Israeli Intelligence Has Deemed Hamas-Run Health Ministry's Death Toll Figures Generally Accurate". Vice. Archived from the original on 3 March 2024. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
  38. ^ Robertson, Rick (27 June 2024). "House votes to ban State Department from citing Gaza Health Ministry death toll statistics". The Hill. Archived from the original on 30 June 2024. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  39. ^ a b c "62 Democrats Join 207 Republicans in Vote to Conceal Gaza Death Toll". The Intercept. 27 June 2024. Archived from the original on 3 July 2024. Retrieved 4 July 2024.
  40. ^ "Hamas announces cabinet reshuffle in Gaza". Hürriyet Daily News. 2 September 2012. Archived from the original on 12 October 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
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