Gaza Health Ministry

The Gaza Health Ministry (GHM), officially the Palestinian Ministry of Health – Gaza, is responsible for managing healthcare and medical services in the Gaza Strip. The health ministry's casualty reports have received significant attention during the course of the Gaza–Israel conflict. Its numbers have historically been considered reliable by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and Human Rights Watch. In relation to the Gaza war, two letters published in The Lancet journal did not find evidence of inflation or fabrication of Palestinian casualty numbers. A peer-reviewed analysis published by The Lancet in January 2025 concluded the GHM had undercounted deaths due to traumatic injury by 41% in its reports on the Gaza war, with the total estimated traumatic injury deaths as of October 2024 probably exceeding 70,000 as opposed to the GHM's reported 41,909—59.1% of them being women and children and the elderly. Another independent peer-reviewed analysis of casualties was published in The Lancet by Michael Spagat and other researchers. They estimated 75,200 violent deaths and 8,540 excess non-violent deaths between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025. The estimate of violent deaths is 34.7% higher than the GHM's casualty count at the time. Of the violent deaths, the researchers estimate that 56.2% were women, children, and elderly individuals.