A recent retrospective mortality survey of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff and their families found an appalling death rate during Israel’s all-out war on Gaza, especially among children, which is consistent with data provided by Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
The survey was conducted by MSF’s research arm Epicentre and covered 2,523 people—MSF workers and their family members—between October 2023 and March 2025. Compared to Ministry of Health estimates prior to the escalation of war on October 7, 2023, the mortality rate was approximately five times higher among the population surveyed (0.41 deaths per 10,000 people per day). For children under 5, the mortality rate increased approximately tenfold (0.70 deaths per 10,000 people). For babies less than 1 month, the mortality rate was six times higher (42.3 deaths per 1,000 live births).
“The children of Gaza are being decimated,” said Amande Bazerolle, deputy manager of MSF’s emergency department. “This disregard for children’s lives clearly indicates that this war run by Israel in Gaza is against all Palestinians. Israel’s allies must put all their efforts behind ending the genocide that’s taking place before our very eyes.”
Among MSF staff and households surveyed, 2 percent of people died and 7 percent were injured during the period from October 2023 to March 2025. Three-quarters of the deaths were due to war injuries, the vast majority of those from blasts. Forty-eight percent of the people who died from blast injuries among our colleagues' households were children (19 children under 18 years old) and 40 percent were under 10 years old (16 children under 10 years old).
In total, more than 56,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 132,000 have been injured since October 7, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
While the results of MSF’s survey—conducted among staff and their families—cannot be extrapolated as representative of the entire population of Gaza, it provides a chilling snapshot of the terrible toll of this war on civilians. This data demonstrates that no one is immune to the effects of this conflict. Medical staff and their families, including MSF colleagues, could be considered to have better access to health care than the rest of Gaza's population. However, in addition to the high rates of mortality and injury, MSF’s survey also found that two-thirds of people with chronic diseases experienced one or more treatment interruptions.
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Read moreThis lack of access to health care is the result of the Israeli campaign to systematically destroy the health system and the means of survival of the whole population. Only 18 out of 36 hospitals remain even partially functional, even as medical needs have exploded. Hospitals are also running dangerously short of essential supplies. Meanwhile, Israel continues to block most medical evacuations despite the fact that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 10,000 people are in urgent need of medical and surgical treatment that cannot be provided inside Gaza.
The quantitative data from MSF’s study helps illustrate part of the reality in Gaza and supports other available data, a point emphasized by the study coordinator Dr. Wendelin Moser, an epidemiologist working with MSF Epicentre.
“When we compared the names of deceased individuals due to violence from our survey with the list of war-related deaths from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, we matched nearly 90 percent,” Dr. Moser said. “This indicates the validity of the Ministry of Health statistics on the number of deaths in Gaza since October 7.”
MSF calls on Israeli authorities to stop the genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza and to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical, and humanitarian supplies immediately. MSF is also calling on Israel’s allies to help facilitate the urgent medical evacuations of people whose lives are in danger, particularly children.
