Frustration with UK delay treating injured Gaza children

British-Palestinian families hope to welcome injured children into their homes

Medics setting up a young patient in an ambulance heading out of Gaza from the European Hospital in Khan Younis in November. AFP

British-Palestinian families are still hoping they can welcome injured children from Gaza into their homes, despite continued silence from the UK government on whether or not it will facilitate their visa applications.

Medical aid organisations, community groups and MPs have been lobbying the UK government for months and meeting senior ministers about fully funded plans to treat a small amount of injured children privately in leading UK hospitals. For British Palestinian families, these negotiations have kept alive a “glimmer of hope” that injured children could come to the UK for treatment soon.

Some of the families who offered to host the children during their stay in the UK have been “on standby” for almost a month, after hearing from a Palestinian medical charity that they expect approval for some medical evacuations from the Israeli authorities at any time.

“We’re still optimistic, we have to be ready if it happens,” Nehad Khanfar, the head of the Association of the Palestinian Community in the UK, told The National. Mr Khanfar is in contact with those families. The group met the Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Downing Street in October last year, and told him they had raised the funds to bring Palestinian children from Gaza to the UK for treatment.

Medics from the World Health Organisation and the Palestinian Red Crescent prepare to start evacuating patients from Khan Younis in Gaza. AFP

Mr Starmer had promised that deputy leader Angela Rayner, who is Minister for Communities, would organise a follow-up with the families, but Dr Khanfar said they had not been contacted since the first meeting in October. The National has contacted the UK government for comment.

More aid is expected to come into Gaza after a ceasefire came into effect on Sunday, but the extensive damage to the strip's hospitals means Palestinians will continue to require overseas care for the time being. Fully funded plans covering transportation and treatment in the UK, devised by medical charity Project Pure Hope, were presented to the UK's new Labour government in November.

But the charity’s most recent letter to the Cabinet Office last week has so far gone unanswered, despite repeated assurances that the case was being reviewed. Arminka Helic, a Conservative peer, expressed her frustration with the government's silence last week.

“I have consistently over the last year supported Project Pure Hope, which ever since November has been trying to extend medical assistance to severely injured children in this country, at no cost to taxpayers, for a limited time, in limited numbers,” she told the House of Lords. “So far they have failed, I have failed too. They have recently reached out to the Cabinet Office again, but have not received a response,” she said.

Arminka Helic, a Tory peer, expressed her frustration with the UK government's response in the House of Lords. Photo: UK Parliament

The plan would require the Home Office to “expedite” medical visas to bring a small number of children in need of urgent, highly specialised care for treatment. It has the backing of major UK hospitals, including the Great Ormond Street children’s hospital, according to PPH.

Children evacuated for medical treatment from Gaza to Egypt or Jordan have so far gone to the UAE, Qatar, Italy, Spain, Ireland and the United States, among other countries, for treatment.

Campaigners stress that they are not looking for the government to establish a special scheme, but simply to fast-track the medical applications that they put forward. Aid agencies are reluctant to make the lengthy and costly visa applications to the UK, with no assurances that they will go through in a timely manner.

In December it emerged that an orphaned four-year-old boy who had lost both of his legs had been denied a medical visa for treatment in the UK, and 50 MPs signed a letter urging the government to do more to take in injured Palestinian children. One injured teenager from Gaza, who lost both his parents in an air strike, was given a visa to live in the UK under the Conservative government in June last year.