Press Release: Veritas Press C.I.C.
Author: Kamran Faqir
Article Date Published: 13 Aug 2025 at 18:24 GMT
Category: Middle East | Palestine-Gaza | US-Israel At War
Source(s): Veritas Press C.I.C. | Multi News Agencies
Gaza City— As Israeli bombardments and ground incursions continue to tear through the Gaza Strip, a second, quieter crisis is accelerating inside overcrowded wards and makeshift clinics: multi-drug-resistant (MDR) infections. A peer-reviewed Lancet Infectious Diseases comment released on Aug. 12, 2025, paints the most granular picture yet. Two-thirds of more than 1,300 clinical samples processed at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City carried MDR bacteria, confirming the spread long suspected by frontline medics but seldom documented since laboratories were destroyed.
“It’s particularly alarming, we still don’t know the true scale because almost all labs have been destroyed and many medical staff killed,” — Bilal Irfan, co-author of the Lancet analysis, speaking to reporters.
Doctors and aid workers say this isn’t just a clinical concern; it’s a vector of mass, preventable suffering. MDR pathogens mean longer hospital stays, where beds exist, more amputations, heightened mortality, and faster transmission in shelters where displaced families crowd together without clean water or sanitation. “It’s a horrible picture,” said Krystel Moussally, an epidemiology adviser with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who has studied AMR (antimicrobial resistance) patterns across Gaza and other war zones.
What The Lab Data Shows:
Al-Ahli’s microbiology team, one of the last still partially functioning, reviewed every specimen from Nov. 1, 2023, through Aug. 31, 2024. Roughly two-thirds were multidrug-resistant, with marked non-susceptibility to commonly used agents, including several cephalosporins. A parallel breakdown reported by medical outlets summarising the findings noted resistance even in wound infections where MRSA and hard-to-treat Gram-negative organisms were present.
These results match pre-war trends recorded in Gaza’s reconstructive surgery projects: between 2018–2022, ~65% of Staphylococcus aureus isolates were methicillin-resistant and ~35% of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates resisted key drugs like ceftazidime and imipenem, data MSF flagged as a red alert years ago. “War conditions, dirty wounds, delayed surgery, limited antibiotics, and no functioning labs turn bad baselines catastrophic,” an MSF field epidemiologist explained in a 2023 technical brief.
Hospitals Beyond Breaking Point:
The World Health Organisation describes the health system as “catastrophic.” As of Aug. 12–13, WHO’s Gaza lead Dr. Rik Peeperkorn reported that fewer than half of hospitals and under 38% of primary health centres are even partially functional, and stocks of essential medicines and consumables are more than half depleted. Bed occupancy has blown past safety thresholds; even tertiary centres are running at double or triple capacity, with staff triaging between life-saving trauma surgeries and basic infection control.
“We need multiple crossings opened, procedures simplified, and the impediments lifted. We keep hearing about more aid being allowed in, but it’s not happening, or it’s far too slow.” — Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO, Geneva press briefing, Aug. 12, 2025.
On the ground, clinicians describe impossible choices. One paediatric ICU nurse in northern Gaza told a regional TV crew that premature babies were sharing incubators during acute fuel shortages that nearly collapsed oxygen supply lines, conditions under which hospital-acquired infections spread unchecked: “You’re watching sepsis take a child in hours and you cannot even culture the blood in time.” (Hospital staff names withheld for security.) Recent hospital dispatches and wire photos corroborate incubator sharing and fuel-crisis impacts.
Eyewitnesses: “We Wait Until It’s Too Late.”
In the labyrinth of permits and closures, over 20,000 Gazans await medical referrals outside the Strip; more than 600 have died while waiting, according to aid agencies and hospital social workers. One case that has gripped physicians: 15-year-old Nidal, who died of kidney failure after an 18-month wait. “We stopped telling his mother to hope,” a nephrologist said, “because hope became cruel.” Families interviewed describe “torturous limbo” as COGAT approvals stall.
“I carry the papers everywhere in case they call us suddenly. They never call.” — Samira W., mother of a child with renal failure, outside a Rafah clinic.
Why Amr Is Exploding Now:
Conflict mechanics: Mass casualty trauma with contaminated wounds; postponed debridement; crowded wards and shelters; broken water and sewage systems; and the near-total collapse of microbiology services, each is a textbook driver of AMR. The Lancet authors say Gaza’s AMR surge stems from exactly these conditions, compounded by blockades on medicine, chaotic drug donations misaligned with local resistance patterns, and the deliberate or repeated strikes on hospitals, labs, and desalination plants.
Pre-war vulnerabilities: Gaza already carried a heavy AMR burden, with wastewater contamination and hospital water/surface samples showing high resistance to critical antibiotic classes. MSF’s reconstructive cohort had flagged ESBL production in ~30% of Gram-negatives and carbapenem resistance in nearly a quarter of Enterobacteriaceae, numbers that war has almost certainly worsened.
Humanitarian choke points: WHO says entry denials, complex inspections, and irregular access mean that lifesaving kits, ICU equipment, anaesthesia machines, cold-chain items, and targeted antibiotics arrive late, or not at all. UN agencies report that only a trickle of patients can exit for care now, around 11 per day compared with 50–100 pre-Oct. 7. In the same period, under-five malnutrition and hunger have skyrocketed, weakening immunity and raising infection risks across crowded shelters.
Mass Casualty Context:
The military campaign has not abated. In the last 24 hours alone (Aug. 13), strikes killed 123 people across Gaza City and the central Strip, according to the Health Ministry, part of a death toll surpassing 154,000 since Oct. 2023, with malnutrition-linked deaths now recorded officially. Aid seekers have been killed or wounded near distribution points, further overwhelming emergency rooms and depleting blood supplies.
A senior surgeon at a south Gaza hospital described “assembly-line amputations”: “We are forced into rapid guillotine cuts to save lives, then infections spiral because we lack antibiotics, sterile dressing sets, or the capacity to re-operate. We sometimes debride on the floor.” (Name withheld.) Reports from hospital networks and the Health Cluster echo these shortages.
The Amr Front Line: What Must Happen Now.
Ceasefire and protection of health infrastructure. The Lancet authors say halting attacks on hospitals, labs, and water systems is a precondition to stabilising infection control and surveillance. “Without this ceasefire, the infection burden will escalate further,” they warn.
Stabilise what’s left of the lab system. Preserve and supply functioning microbiology services (like Al-Ahli’s) with reagents, culture media, and power, to generate real-time antibiograms that guide treatment and donor procurement; otherwise, “random” antibiotic donations will continue to fuel resistance.
Open multiple crossings, pre-position supplies. WHO has called for simplified procedures and pre-approved stockpiles inside Gaza to avoid recurrent bottlenecks. “We hear about more aid, but it’s not happening, or it’s far too slow,” Peeperkorn said.
Coordinate antimicrobial supply through the WHO/Health Cluster. Targeted formularies should prioritise agents matched to Gaza’s current resistance patterns (e.g., access to carbapenem-sparing regimens, appropriate anti-pseudomonal options, and paediatric liquid formulations), as well as PPE and infection-prevention basics, such as chlorine, gloves, and sterile packs.
Evacuate high-risk patients quickly. Children with sepsis, neonates, burn patients, and renal failure cases should be prioritised for cross-border transfers. Current exit levels (~11/day) are a fraction of pre-war flows and must be scaled rapidly.
War-zone AMR “surge package.” MSF and AMR specialists recommend emergency bundles that deploy with trauma teams: bedside debridement kits, point-of-care CRP/procalcitonin where feasible, negative-pressure dressings, and standardised de-escalation protocols to reduce misuse, measures proven in other conflict theatres.
Accountability And The Public Record:
Gaza’s AMR explosion is not an abstract epidemiological curve; it is the predictable consequence of a war that has obliterated sanitation, health infrastructure, and supply lines. International bodies continue to document potential violations: strikes on hospitals and delays or denials of medical evacuations and aid consignments. Meanwhile, the daily casualty ledger grows: on Aug. 13, yet another triple-digit death toll. Each blast and each denial is a data point in the epidemiology of resistance.
“AMR used to be our long-term emergency,” said a Gaza infectious-diseases registrar reached by phone. “Now it’s immediate. We are treating 2025 pathogens with 1990s tools, if we can get them.” (Name withheld.) (Context aligned with Lancet and WHO reporting.)
In Summary: A Dual Crisis, War And Superbugs.
The surge of antibiotic-resistant infections in Gaza is not a tragic accident of war; it is the direct consequence of a system designed to collapse the very conditions necessary for survival. For months, doctors, aid agencies, and international health bodies have warned that the deliberate destruction of hospitals, water networks, and sanitation systems would breed an epidemic resistant to modern medicine. Those warnings were ignored, silenced, or dismissed by the same powers enabling Israel’s blockade and bombardment.
What is unfolding is more than a public health emergency; it is a case study in how siege warfare dismantles an entire society’s ability to heal itself. “We are fighting a war with no weapons,” one Gaza surgeon told The Lancet. “Our antibiotics are useless, our wards are full, and our patients are dying of infections we could once treat.” The WHO has confirmed that drug shortages and overcrowded, unhygienic facilities are creating “a breeding ground for superbugs,” while Médecins Sans Frontières has accused Israel of “weaponising health” by denying critical medical supplies and evacuation permits.
This is the logical endpoint of a blockade that has cut off not just food and fuel, but knowledge, mobility, and medical exchange. Analysts warn that the unchecked spread of resistant pathogens in Gaza will not remain confined, bacteria do not respect borders, and the crisis threatens to spill across the region. Yet the international community continues to treat the situation as an unfortunate by-product of conflict rather than what it is: a foreseeable and preventable catastrophe rooted in political decisions.
As Gaza’s doctors exhaust the last of their dwindling drug stocks, the question is no longer whether the world will act in time to save lives, but whether it will even admit its role in creating a future where wounds and infections, once curable, will mean a death sentence for generations.
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