Since October 2023, the destruction of Gaza’s health care system and the barriers to providing critical hospital-based health care services to the Palestinian population have been extensively documented. The objective of this study was to provide an aggregate and by-governornate descriptive analysis of individual hospital functionality and hospital system capacity over the first 13 months of conflict. Thirty-five public, private, and non-governmental hospitals were analyzed from 7 October 2023 to 31 October 2024. Data sources included WHO ‘rapid response’ database and the WHO Health Resources and Services Availability Monitoring System. Data were combined to create a longitudinal and spatial representation of individual hospital capacity status (fully, partially, minimally, and nonfunctional). Hospital functionality status was weighted and aggregated to provide a proxy estimate of total hospital system capacity. By 28 October 2023, 71.4% (n = 25) of hospitals were in the partially functional status, and 28.6% (n = 10) hospitals were rendered nonfunctional. Hospital system functionality hit its lowest point (13.9%) on 5 April 2024 and did not exceed 33% after December 2023. The largest number of hospitals in nonfunctional status was twenty-five, which occurred twice during the study period, once in November 2023 and again in April 2024, resulting in 71.4% nonfunctional status among all hospitals. This study provides additional evidence that the Gaza Strip’s hospital system was directly affected by the first year of the conflict, greatly impacting the ability to provide critical health services.
Mills et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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