How are Gaza casualty updates affected by Israeli attacks on hospitals?
The Ministry of Health in Gaza has been struggling to update casualty figures as Israeli forces have increasingly targeted hospitals and allied services in the besieged enclave.
The United Nations has confirmed that the “collapse of services and communications” at hospitals in northern Gaza is seriously hampering health officials.
So, when was the last time we got an update, how has the ministry managed its figures so far, and how dire is the situation of hospitals in Gaza?
When was the last update?
On Sunday, the government media office in Gaza updated the casualty figures after a gap of two days. It raised the death toll to 11,100, including more than 8,000 children and women. The last official update came on November 10 at 2pm (12:00 GMT).
“Due to the targeting of hospitals and the prevention of entry of any of the bodies or wounded, the Ministry of Health was unable, on Saturday, to issue accurate statistics for the numbers of dead and injured during the past hours,” the media office said in a statement.
The Health Ministry in Gaza has been providing daily updates since the war started following the surprise Hamas attack inside Israel killed about 1,200 people.
Last week, Barbara Leaf, assistant US secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told a House panel that the number of those killed in Gaza – home to 2.3 million people – is likely “higher than is being cited”.
The UN relief agency confirmed in its latest update on Saturday that a communications breakdown has prevented new figures from coming in.
Nearly 3,000 Palestinians remain missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble while another 27,490 Palestinians have reportedly been injured, the Health Ministry said on Friday.
How does the system work?
The Health Ministry had previously explained its methodology for compiling data on Palestinian casualties.
Once a victim who arrives at the emergency department of a government hospital is identified, their data, including ID number and personal information, along with the time of arrival, are recorded in the hospital’s computerised information system.
Each hospital also records the cases of death for the wounded who spent a period in the hospital before their death.
The daily information about the killed Palestinians is transferred from the decentralised hospital system to the central database of a government registry.
Non-governmental hospitals use their own forms to record data about the victim as soon as they arrive. Then, these forms are sent to the Health Information Centre at the Ministry of Health within 24 hours for entry into the central database.
