A total of 15 Palestinian children with severe health problems or serious injuries due to the effects of the Israeli offensive on Gaza and who cannot be treated in the Strip due to the destruction of its health system will be transferred this Wednesday to Madrid from Egypt with their immediate family members to receive medical care in Spanish hospitals. Among the patients, 13 have serious trauma injuries, while the remaining two are a cancer patient and another with a chronic heart disease, according to the Ministry of Health.
The Gazan minors and 28 family members will arrive at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base on Wednesday afternoon aboard a medical aircraft with personnel from the UMAER (Medical Aeroevacuation Unit) of the Ministry of Defense, who have traveled to Cairo to carry out the transfer. Four health workers from the Ministry of Health, two Migration officials and two interpreters from the Spanish NGO Accem have traveled to Cairo to coordinate and support the operation.
The patients will be treated in hospitals in the Basque Country, Asturias, Navarre, Castilla La-Mancha and Madrid. The distribution between centres, according to the Ministry of Health, will be based on the speciality and characteristics of each one: five will go to the Donostia University Hospital; five to the Cruces University Hospital in Baracaldo, both in the Basque Country; two to the Central University Hospital of Asturias in Oviedo; two to the General University Hospital of Toledo; one to the University Hospital of Navarro in Pamplona; and one to the Gómez Ulla Hospital in Madrid, dependent on Defence.
The relatives – except for the mother of one of the minors who will be hospitalised with her daughter in the Donistia hospital – will be taken in by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration in collaboration with Accem. The NGO will manage, within the framework of a project called Cunina, the provision of services to the relatives who accompany the patients, including accommodation, food, psychological and legal care, and financial aid to cover their needs during the programme. While the operation lasts, it is planned that the companions will be accommodated in spaces managed by the entity, as close as possible to the hospitals where their relatives are receiving care.
The operation is in response to the commitment made to the World Health Organization (WHO) by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on May 22 in Congress, when he said that Spain would welcome around thirty Gazan minors in the coming weeks “to try to give them what all boys and girls deserve, wherever they were born.”
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This is the first medical evacuation of Palestinian patients from Gaza carried out within the international Medevac mechanism, which is activated when a country faces a disaster that overwhelms its response capacity. Spain has participated in previous operations using this system to assist wounded and sick people from Ukraine and Moldova. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Italy have also received Palestinians requiring medical assistance.
Health system collapsed
The Gazan children evacuated to Spain were in the Turkish Hospital in Gaza City and the WHO processed the necessary documentation so that they could be transferred to Cairo due to the collapse of health facilities in the Strip. The director general of the organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, explained on Tuesday night that they were all already in Egypt before the Rafah border crossing was closed after it was occupied by the Israeli army at the beginning of May, which abruptly stopped the trickle of daily evacuations of patients from Gaza to Egyptian territory.
The WHO chief on Tuesday called for an increase in medical evacuations to countries that can care for Gazan patients, noting that more than 10,000 people in the Strip still need medical treatment outside the enclave. Since October 2023, some 5,000 Palestinians requiring medical assistance that they could not get in Gaza have been evacuated, according to Adhanom Ghebreyesus; almost all of them left before the Israeli army occupied the Rafah border crossing. The Israeli offensive has already left more than 39,100 dead and another 90,000 injured since October 7, 2023.
The Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) has thanked the Spanish government, the EU and the WHO for responding to its appeal, which “will save the lives of Palestinian children,” in the words of its president, Vivian Khalaf. For his part, Tareq Hailat, the director of the organization’s overseas treatment program, which has collaborated in the evacuation of the injured and sick children to Spain, said that “the courage and resilience of these young patients inspire us every day.” But he also regretted that “many more children, like these 15, need urgent medical attention and evacuation.” And he announced that they are preparing missions similar to the one managed by Spain in the coming weeks in Belgium, Norway and Italy.
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