Twice the official number: US doctors say Gaza death toll more than 92,000

As many as 45 American physicians, surgeons and nurses, who have volunteered in Gaza since last October say the likely death toll from Israel’s all-out war is “already greater than 92,000”.

The estimate translates to 4.2 percent of Gaza’s total population. It’s more than double the death toll of more than 39,100 reported by the local health ministry.

“A ceasefire must be imposed… We believe our government is obligated to do this, both under American law and international humanitarian law,” the medical practitioners wrote in an open letter addressed to US President Joe Biden, his wife Dr Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

The letter said, “everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both”, with only marginal exceptions.

“Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhoea,” the letter said, reminding the US president that pregnant women in Gaza are giving birth to underweight infants but they are unable to breastfeed due to malnutrition.

Malnourished new mothers in Gaza feed their underweight newborns infant formula made with poisonous water, it said. “We can never forget that the world abandoned these innocent women and babies.”

The medical professionals urged the US leadership to realise that epidemics are “raging” in Gaza.

Israel’s continued and repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza—half of whom are children—to areas with no running water or even toilets is “absolutely shocking”.

It is now “virtually guaranteed” to result in “widespread death” from viral and bacterial diarrheal diseases and pneumonia, particularly in children under the age of five.

“We worry that unknown thousands have already died from the lethal combination of malnutrition and disease and that tens of thousands more will die in the coming months. Most of them will be young children,” the letter said.

The open letter was posted on social media platform X by California-based surgeon Feroze Sidhwa on July 25.

Reminding the US president and vice president that children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict, the letter stated that each of the 45 medical professionals treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that “must have been deliberately directed” at them.

“Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest,” it said.

They expressed their incredulity as to why anyone would continue arming the country that is “deliberately killing these children”.

Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s healthcare resources and has killed one out of every 40 healthcare workers. At the same time, healthcare needs have increased massively from the lethal combination of military violence, malnutrition, and disease, it added.

The medical professionals urged President Biden and Vice President Harris to withhold military, economic and diplomatic support from Israel.

“Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets.”

The doctors also demanded that the Gazan population receive a minimum of 20 litres of potable water per person per day. They demanded that medical and surgical professionals and equipment be allowed full and unrestricted access to Gaza.

“Israel is currently blocking any physician of Palestinian descent from working in Gaza, even American citizens. This makes a mockery of the American ideal that ‘all men are created equal’ and degrades our nation and our profession,” the letter said.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Israel bombed infrastructure worth $18.5 billion—equal to 97 percent of the combined GDP of the West Bank and Gaza in 2022—to rubble in the first four months of the war.

Nearly ten months of full-fledged war has left at least 90,000 Palestinians wounded while more than 10,000 people remain buried under the debris—estimated to be at least 26 million tonnes that would likely take “years to remove”.