Since our last post on the issue in November, the series of health crises facing Palestinians has worsened considerably. After 140 days of escalated hostilities and ongoing Israeli bombardment, both basic utilities and healthcare infrastructure have been decimated, leaving those who survive in the occupied Palestinian territories––including the 1.7 million people, or 75% of the population, who have been displaced––with direly few resources for tending to both new and existing health needs. This comes on top of the Palestinian death toll which, as of February 17^th, the Gaza Ministry of Health estimates at over 29,000 lives lost.

• According to the WHO, 7 out of 24 hospitals in northern Gaza remain, and only at partial levels of functioning. 7 out of 12 hospitals in southern Gaza remain partially functional. Hostilities in the areas around Nasser Medical Complex and Al-Amal Hospital are making both centers difficult or impossible for patients and ambulances to access. The WHO again called for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of civilians of healthcare.
  
• The New York Times and UNICEF both report that failing sanitation systems and a shortage of toilets in encampments in Rafah are increasingly spreading infectious disease including Hepatitis A cholera. 
  
• The Global Nutrition Cluster reports that food poverty is rampant––faced by over 90% of children between 6 and 23 months old. The WHO, the World Food Project, and UNICEF have raised the alarm that the escalating hunger crisis will soon cause scores of children to die, as one in six children under 2 years is already currently malnourished. 
  
• Pregnant and postpartum people, as well as newborns and infants, continue to be in dire need. The Guardian reports that although relief organizations such as the Safe Birth in Palestine Project have provided virtual counsel, telecommunications are simply not adequate to the problem and are increasingly unavailable to many people in need. 
  
• UNRWA’s official statement of February 13^th supports the issues raised above and also underscores the heavy loads carried by each healthcare worker: an average of 113 patients per day. They urge support for the pool of healthcare workers in Gaza over the entrance of international healthcare workers, and emphasize the need for wound care and mental health care.
  

Although health conditions in Gaza have been in dire straits for years––particularly since the beginning of the Israeli blockage in 2007––academic bioethics as a whole has paid little attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, particularly, to the health conditions of the Palestinian people. This tendency has not been universal, however: Zohar Lederman (2024, 2023, 2020) has been especially vocal in drawing attention to the cascading health crises in Palestine and has repeatedly underscored the responsibility of bioethicists to use their normative tools and platforms to denounce the injustices (with Shmuel Lederman and Emily Shepp Daniels, 2019).

In BMJ Global Health, Layth Hanbali, Edwin Jit Leung Kwong, Amy Neilson, James Smith, Sali Hafez, and Rasha Khoury characterize Israeli operations as the escalation of a necropolitical regime waging death and forcing millions to live, debilitated, in its shadow. The authors write that “the moral foundations of global health and medical practice require us to prioritise and foreground oppressed realities, and to practise epistemic resistance.”   

A recent piece by Mishal Khan and someone writing under the pseudonym Alu Tacon Tinua in The Lancet is also worthy of note: the authors condemn human rights violations in Gaza while also highlighting the institutional silencing and retaliation against healthcare professionals and researchers supporting justice in Palestine. They conclude, “For many, institutions’ silence and their role in silencing in the face of a raging, manufactured public health crisis in Gaza reveals their level of commitment to challenging racial stereotyping and dehumanisation better than statements they have made.”

Institutional resources and calls for action can be found in several bioethics-adjacent fields. The Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights at Harvard offers an online information hub with recent popular and academic publications, as well as intensive summer courses and fellowship opportunities (though both calls for applications have passed for the current cycle). Both a the National Women’s Studies Association and an independent group of philosophers have called for a ceasefire and end to the siege in Gaza. See links for more information and resources. If you’re aware of any other feminist bioethicist efforts in this direction, please do share in the comments below.