UK’s Lammy urged to honour pledge to help evacuate injured children from Gaza
Injured Palestinian children receive medical treatment at the Ahli Arab Hospital after an Israeli air strike hit a school in Gaza City on 3 April 2025
Dania Akkad reports in Middle East Eye on 16 July 2025:
Britain has “a clear moral obligation” to provide state-funded medical treatment in the UK to Palestinian children injured in the Gaza war, a doctor for a charity helping to evacuate children from the warzone has said.
The comments from Dr Tareq Hailat of the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) came after Foreign Secretary David Lammy told MPs on Wednesday that he would be “happy to do more” if requests for the medical evacuations of Palestinian children were made.
In April, two girls from Gaza arrived in the UK, becoming the first Palestinian children to be evacuated to the country for specialist medical treatment, entirely funded by charitable donations.
The evacuation came through the Project Pure Hope initiative in partnership with PCRF, 17 months after organisations and healthcare workers first started pushing for a legal pathway to bring children from Gaza to the UK for treatment.
An earlier attempt to bring five children for treatment in January 2024 was unsuccessful when they were unable to obtain visas from the Home Office.
Meanwhile, the need for medical evacuations for children in Gaza, already overwhelming the short list of countries offering help, has only grown with Medicine Sans Frontiers pleading this week for more countries to open their doors.
Currently, healthcare workers tell MEE that around 5,000 children are believed to be among at least 12,000 patients in Gaza that the World Health Organisation says need to be evacuated outside Gaza to access care.
A UN-sponsored report warned this week that ten children a day are losing one or both limbs in Gaza due to Israel’s assault on the Palestinian enclave.
‘Power of the state’
Lammy, testifying before the International Development Committee on Wednesday, was asked by Labour MP Sam Rushworth whether there was “more that we can do for the children of Gaza”.
Rushworth said he and other MPs had recently met with a British plastic surgeon who had just returned from Gaza and showed them video footage and images of children suffering in Gaza.
“As you know, tens of thousands are orphans and many of them are dying because they are not able to receive medical treatment. To date, just two have entered the UK,” Rushworth said. “I understand that there are complexities around this, but I know that I would be happy to take a Palestinian child into my home. I’d be happy to help fund their treatment, but we are not able to without the power of the state behind it.”
Lammy responded: “We have supported the [Project Pure] Hope charity initiative to bring children to the UK. I am happy to do more if those requests come in.”