An escalation of the war in Gaza could result in the deaths of 85,000 Palestinians from injuries and illnesses in the next six months. This would be the worst of three situations that prominent epidemiologists have modeled to understand the conflict's potential future death toll.
These deaths would be in addition to the more than 29,000 deaths in Gaza that local authorities have attributed to the conflict since the conflict began in October. The estimate represents an “excess of deaths” above what would have been expected if there had been no war.
In a second scenario, there could be an additional 58,260 deaths in the enclave over the next six months unless the current level of fighting or humanitarian access changes, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Hygiene Tropical Medicine.
According to their analysis, that number could rise to 66,720 if there were outbreaks of infectious diseases such as cholera.
Even under the best of the three options outlined by the research team – an immediate and lasting ceasefire without an outbreak of infectious diseases – an additional 6,500 Gazans could die in the next six months as a direct result of the war, the analysis found.
The population of Gaza before the war was 2.2 million.
“This is not a political message or advocacy,” said Dr. Francesco Checchi, Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“We just wanted to bring it to the forefront of people's minds and to the desks of decision-makers,” he added, “so that afterwards you can say that there was some available evidence in the decision-making process about what the impact of this would be.” in relation to life.
Dr. Checchi and his colleagues estimated the projected excess deaths using health data available for Gaza before the war began and collected during more than four months of fighting.
Their study takes into account deaths from traumatic injuries, infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal causes, and noncommunicable diseases for which people can no longer receive medication or treatments such as dialysis.
Dr. Checchi said the analysis made it possible to quantify the potential impact of a ceasefire on human lives. “The decisions that will be made in the next few days and weeks are of enormous importance for the development of the death toll in Gaza,” he said.
The projected 6,500 deaths even with a ceasefire are based on the assumption that there will be no infectious disease epidemics. If there was an outbreak of cholera, measles, polio or meningitis, that number would be 11,580, Dr. Paul Spiegel, director of the Hopkins Center for the Humanitarian Health and author of the study, which was not peer-reviewed.
While it is obvious that military escalation would result in additional casualties, he added, policymakers should be aware of the range in fatalities that these scenarios suggest.
“We hope to bring some reality to it,” said Dr. Mirror. “That’s 85,000 additional deaths in a population of which 1.2 percent have already been killed.”
Patrick Ball, an expert in the quantitative analysis of conflict deaths who was not involved in the research, said it was unusual to see such a rigorous attempt to calculate the potential humanitarian costs of an ongoing war.
“The paper sheds light on this conflict in a way that we have not seen in any previous conflict,” said Dr. Ball, research director at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, a nonprofit organization. “It illuminates the likely cost in human life and human suffering of various types of future actions that are under human control.”
“People will make decisions that lead to one of these three scenarios or a complex mix of them, and that gives us a sense of what the likely outcomes of those decisions are,” he added.
The analysis estimates that the death toll from traumatic injuries in Gaza over the next six months will be spread across all ages and genders.
“43 percent of traumatic deaths occur in women and 42 percent in children under 19,” the paper says, reflecting “the intensity and widespread nature of the bombing.”
Even with an immediate ceasefire, war-related deaths would continue, according to the analysis. Casualties include deaths of people who succumb to their previous injuries or are injured by unexploded ordnance, deaths of infants and women for whom comprehensive care at birth is not possible, and deaths of malnourished children who are unable to are to ward off infections such as pneumonia.
“I don’t think people realize how long it will take for this to change,” Dr. Mirror.