Gaza Healthcare System

Claire Hazelgrove Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for the healthcare system in Gaza.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy, and I thank the Minister for attending. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee and the co-signatories of my application for the debate. I place on the record my thanks to Médecins Sans Frontières UK and Professor Ramzi Khamis for their assistance in my preparations.

This debate could not have come at a more crucial time for healthcare in Gaza: in about a week’s time, many aid agencies that provide medical care will be barred from operating there. I believe there might be an urgent question to the Foreign Secretary about this very situation today, so it is a live debate. I thank all those who have asked to speak about this crucial issue.

In June last year, when preparing to go to the main Chamber for Foreign Office oral questions, I received a phone call from my colleague, Dr Rebecca Inglis, who works for Healthcare Workers Watch. She told me that, just hours before, a GP in Gaza was killed by an Israeli soldier, shot in the head. I do not know why—perhaps because I am also a GP—but that really hit home about the situation in Gaza. More than 1,000 healthcare workers have now been murdered in Gaza, while countless others remain detained.

As well as the healthcare system in Gaza, I would like to talk about healthocide as a concept. The deliberate targeting of healthcare workers is becoming an instrument of war, not just in Gaza but in other places in the world. Healthcare workers do not have sides and are not partisan; the only side they are on is the side of humanity. We must stop this developing situation in the world. In addition, the healthcare system in Gaza is near to total collapse after such targeting. As I said, in a week’s time many aid agencies—over 30 of them—will be barred from working in Gaza. I will, then, discuss both those issues.

The targeting of healthcare workers in Gaza has been widespread and well documented. Since October 2023, 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed, hospitals have been bombed and raided, and senior doctors have been detained. I talked to one healthcare worker in Gaza who said that they could not leave the hospital in scrubs because they would be identified as a healthcare worker and arrested. Later this evening, I will host a launch event for the investigation of the Gaza aid-worker massacre on 23 March last year, when 15 emergency workers were massacred by Israeli forces.

I could not come to this debate without mentioning the tragic case of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was murdered by Israeli forces alongside six of her family members. Crucially, two paramedics who were coming to save her life were also killed. Her voice will continue to haunt the world. I hope to meet her mother later today, and I want to be able to look her in the eye and say that this Government are doing all they can to prevent another such situation as happened to her daughter.

Healthocide is becoming a new phenomenon in war. More than 13 years ago in Syria, for example, healthcare workers were systematically targeted by the then Syrian Government and Russian forces. The same is happening in Sudan now. There is, then, a bigger point, and we must stop this happening. This country should campaign on healthocide in the world.

The situation in Gaza is grim for healthcare: not a single hospital is fully functional in the Gaza strip, while 50% of them are partially functional; only 1.5% of primary healthcare centres, or three out of 200, are fully functional; and not a single hospital is operating in northern Gaza or Rafah. Healthcare workers conduct more than 100 consultations a day; in British general practice, I am not allowed to do more than 25, so that gives a feeling of how much work these people are doing. That is putting an enormous strain on the healthcare system.

An interim rapid damage and needs assessment conducted jointly by the United Nations, the EU and the World Bank found that more than $1.47 billion-worth of damages had been inflicted on the health sector, and that reconstruction will cost about $8 billion. There is a massive need to rebuild the healthcare facilities in Gaza.

Two weeks ago, I heard direct testimony from a British doctor who had just returned from Gaza. She witnessed the wilful destruction of medical equipment—for example, cutting off the ends of all the ultrasound machines—and the systematic destruction of medical data. She described seeing patients arriving with sniper wounds that were so precise they were clearly made to cause lifelong disabilities and therefore harm young people in Gaza.

[Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)]

Like me, many residents across the Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency have been horrified to see the scale of human suffering on the ground in Gaza. It is right that our Government have been doing what they can to bring children who are in urgent medical need to the UK for treatment. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that our Government continue to do all they can to help vulnerable children in Gaza?

[Dr Opher]

Indeed, and many of us have campaigned on the medical evacuation of young people. The Minister has delivered on that, although there have been some problems recently, which he may address. A key issue in Gaza to which I will return is that currently the medical evacuation of anyone to East Jerusalem, which is still in the occupied territories, is not allowed. East Jerusalem has some well-functioning hospitals with capacity, and that is one of the issues we need to address.