The authoritative medical journal The Lancet ups the Gaza death toll to nearly 186,000.
The numbers of dead in Gaza as reported by the Gaza health ministry has generally been seen as accurate by everyone except Israel (of course), pro-Israel apologists including the United States House of Representatives.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry today reported that the death toll in Gaza has reached 38,243 since the war started.
A further 88,033 have thus far been wounded according to the Gazan ministry.
Based on the 70% of deaths fully identified by the Gaza Health Ministry, the U.N. says 52% of those killed in Gaza are women and children; around 40% — or 10,000 — are men. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and members of Hamas killed. More than 1,900 people killed are classified as elderly.
Covering for Israeli genocide, the U.S.. House passed an amendment barring the State Department from citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll statistics for the Israel-Hamas war in an attempt to halt discussion of the war’s deaths.
The bipartisan group of House members voted 269-144 to pass the amendment to the State Department’s annual appropriations bill.
62 Democrats joined all but two Republicans in voting for the measure.
However, according to a report from the authoritative medical journal, The Lancet, the health ministry numbers may be a conservative estimate.
The Lancet numbers understanding of the devastation reaped in Gaza, where 2.2 million Palestinians live, in what aid groups say was a "heartbreaking and harrowing, but not necessarily surprising" new figure.
Authors of the article Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf estimated this figure by taking the number of direct deaths reported by Gaza's health authorities at the time, 37,396 people, and applying an estimate of four indirect deaths to every one direct death, a calculation that comes from the 'Global Burden of Armed Violence' report by the Geneva Declaration.
The declaration, published in 2008 where several conflicts were analyzed to attain the estimate that for every one direct death in the wars analyzed in the report, four people were killed indirectly due to the "worsening of social, economic, and health conditions in conflict-affected areas".
According to a 10 June report from the World Health Organization as of 26 May in Gaza there were 865,157 cases of acute respiratory infections, 485,315 cases of diarrhea, 93,690 cases of scabies and lice, 8,538 cases of chicken pox and 81,795 cases of acute jaundice syndrome.
Al Jazeera reported that a medical source in Gaza said that 436 cancer patients had died since the outbreak of the war due to lack of treatment.
The Lancet report also determined that the estimated figure of 186,000 killed represents 7.9 percent of Gaza's pre-war population estimate of 2,375,259 people, and noted that it is difficult to determine an accurate death toll on the ground due to a number of factors.
This includes undercounting by Gaza's health authorities due to the destruction of the health service, with health authorities relying on reliable media sources and first responders to estimate the death toll.
Likewise, Gaza's official statistics don't account for bodies that are buried under the rubble, which is currently estimated at 10,000 people. At least 35 percent of Gaza's buildings have been destroyed.
"Documenting the true scale is crucial for ensuring historical accountability and acknowledging the full cost of the war," the report said.
The Lancet has previously published articles on Gaza's death toll, with one arguing that there was no inflation of mortality in the reporting by Gaza's health ministry after accusations of falsified figures by some pro-Israel press and media.
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