First children from Gaza arrive in UK for medical treatment after 17month struggle
Two young girls from Gaza have arrived in the UK, the first Palestinian children in need of specialist medical treatment to be evacuated to the country, over a year and a half into a war that has devastated Gaza's healthcare system.
Rama, 12, and Ghena, five, travelled to the UK from Egypt last week and will be treated in the private wings of leading hospitals in London, through a project funded entirely by charitable donations.
"We were so scared. We were living in tents and shrapnel from air strikes used to fall on us," Rama, who has a lifelong bowel condition and needs an urgent operation, told the BBC.
"Mum used to suffer so much going to hospitals while bombs were falling and would stand in long queues just to get me a strip of pills. Here I'll get treatment and get better and be just like any other girl."
Ghena will be treated for fluid pressing up against her optic nerve. Without an operation, she could lose sight in her left eye.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Project Pure Hope, the initiative through which the girls came in partnership with the US-based Palestinian Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), is the result of over a year and half of effort among a group of organisations and healthcare workers to push for a legal pathway to bring children from Gaza to the UK for treatment.
'A moment of national shame'
But a doctor speaking on behalf of a campaign group for medical workers supporting Palestine told MEE the length of time it had taken the British government to allow the two girls into the country - while leaving others in need of treatment still without visas - ought to be "a moment of national shame".
He criticised the government too for failing to provide the girls with fully funded care, as it had done for Ukrainian children flown to the UK for medical treatment.
An attempt in January 2024 to bring four siblings and their cousin from Gaza to the UK for medical treatment through the same initiative and also funded by donations was unsuccessful when they were unable to obtain visas from the Home Office.
Meanwhile, the need for medical evacuations for children in Gaza, the demand for which was already overwhelming the short list of countries offering to receive them, has only grown.
Dr Tareq Hailat, who heads PCRF's treatment abroad programme, said on Friday that there are at least 5,000 children in Gaza, if not closer to 10,000, currently awaiting approval from Cogat, the Israeli military unit overseeing movement logistics between Gaza and Israel, to leave the enclave for medical treatments.
"There are thousands of children," Hailat said.
Baroness Arminka Helic, who has been calling on the government to create a pathway, said this week that gravely injured children in Gaza "should never have been in this position".
"Many of them are suffering from injuried or conditions that require highly specialised care. In Gaza, where the health system has collapsed, that care simply doesn't exist," she said.
"Giving them access to treatment isn’t just the right thing to do, it is the only chance they have at recovery, and I thank the UK doctors and healthcare leaders who made this possible after seventeen months of tireless dedication and collaboration.”
'Just one success'
Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, a British-Egyptian paediatric neurologist and founder of Health Workers for Palestine, said that the girls' arrival was a "tribute to the extraordinary efforts of Dr Farzana Rahman, Project Pure Hope and the Palestinian families and volunteers who fought for their survival".
Abdel-Mannan has been among those pushing to bring children from Gaza to the UK for treatment. However, he said, their evacuation after more than 17 months of struggle "was made possible not by the UK government, but despite it".
"This should not be a moment of national pride. It should be a moment of national shame," Abdel-Mannan said.
'This should not be a moment of national pride. It should be a moment of national shame'
- Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, Health Workers for Palestine
"After 18 months of Israel’s relentless bombing, genocidal acts, mass displacement, and the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system, the UK has admitted just two injured Palestinian children."
He noted that in contrast to the girls, whose care depends entirely on volunteers and private donors, Ukrainian children evacuated to the UK for treatment in recent years have received fully state-funded care.
"This appalling double standard reveals a brutal truth: the UK government does not treat all children’s lives as equal. That is morally indefensible," Abdel-Mannan said.
Project Pure Hope, which is also providing the girls' families with temporary housing, interpreters, mental health services and safeguarding measures, said their arrival marked "the beginning of a broader programme to provide medical treatment for more children in the months ahead".
PCRF board chair Vivian Khalaf said the mission was a testament to "our relentless determination to save lives, even in the face of overwhelming obstacles and prolonged, complex evacuation procedures".
"But this is just one success - countless critically ill and injured children in Gaza are still waiting. The need is urgent, and we must respond with the urgency this crisis demands, both in Gaza and beyond.”
middleeasteye.net