Children’s medical flight via PCRF, WHO, and EU to Spain A group of children from the Gaza Strip has been evacuated to Spain for life-saving medical treatment, Sky News reported.
This population of children had been admitted to hospitals in Egypt for some months after they were relocated from the Gaza Strip. Israel has injured at least 90,000 Palestinians in the past 10 months, and these children are only a sting of all children in Gaza who need specialized attention.
“Cooperation between several partners and countries will enable these sick children to get the care they need,” remarked World Health Organization WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We are greatly indebted to Egypt and Spain, and we urge any other country that has the ability and facilities for quarantine and treatment to accommodate those who, Least of their own doing, are being caught in the middle of this war.”
Children who flew to Spain had complicated injuries: one with a cardiac ailment and a child battling with cancer. There was a three-year-old with head trauma, a 13-year-old with a limb reconstructive surgery requirement, and a 10-year-old with multiple facial injuries and left eye trauma.
With the 25 relatives or caregivers of the children present, these 32 children had been in Egypt before the 6th of May, since which evacuation became almost impossible because of the closure of the Rafah Border Crossing by the Israeli authorities. Since then, only 23 people have been evacuated through the Kerem Shalom Border Crossing through the occupation state.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez took to X (formerly Twitter) to reassure the children and their families that they would receive “safe treatment” and “what every child deserves, wherever they were born: a healthy and hopeful childhood. Welcome to Spain.
The children and their caregivers flew in from Cairo, and they will all be receiving treatment in different hospitals in Spain.
“This historical partnership will provide the urgently needed medical treatment to children in Europe injured in wars,” chair of the PCRF, Vivian Khalaf, commented.
The WHO highlighted the crucial necessity of creating several MEs from Gaza through Rafah and Kerem Shalom to step up the number of transfers of critically ill patients. They emphasized the need to facilitate medevacs to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, where hospitals await patients. The agency also asked for moving the patients to Egypt and Jordan and from these countries to other nations if this is required.
Dr. Tedros described the solidarity in this approach as “a bright spot in a war that has had so many heartbreaking moments’.’ He articulated a desire to see such collaboration in supporting severe medical cases become the norm rather than the novelty it is.
This effort highlights international collaboration in dealing with the severe suffering in Gaza and also in giving many who desperately require medical care that hope.
