With a fresh spike in the number of coronavirus infections, Gaza is yet again facing the very real prospect that its healthcare system will be overwhelmed.
Back in March, when the pandemic first hit Gaza, David Mills of Boston’s Children’s Hospital, Bram Wispelwey of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Rania Muhareb formerly of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, and Mads Gilbert of University Hospital of North Norway, wrote a short letter to The Lancet, one of the world’s foremost medical journals.
Pandemics will cause more damage to “populations burdened by poverty, military occupation, discrimination and institutionalized oppression,” the authors pointed out. They urged the international community to act to end the “structural violence” that is being inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza.
The letter – “Structural violence in the era of a new pandemic: the case of the Gaza Strip” – was duly published online on 27 March.
Just three days later, however, in a move unusual if not unprecedented for The Lancet, the letter was taken down without comment.
— source electronicintifada.net | 1 Oct 2020