New Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper tells The Mirror the first group of sick and injured children in Gaza have now left and ‘are on the way, travelling now to the UK’
The first group of ill or injured Palestinian children to receive NHS treatment have been evacuated from Gaza and will arrive in the UK within days.
It is understood the children are being cared for by medics in another country in the region, before coming to Britain for further treatment. The UK Government has been coordinating efforts to fast-track medical evacuations for critical ill kids from the war-torn enclave.
The healthcare system in Gaza has been decimated, making it almost impossible for children with long-term conditions to get treatment. More than 50,000 children have been killed or injured since October 7 2023, according to the UN charity Unicef.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Mirror : “We are working to get injured children out of Gaza, to be able to help them in the UK. The first group of children now have left Gaza and are on the way, travelling now to the UK.” The UK is also working to evacuate students with places to study at British universities.
“It’s a lot of diplomatic work in order to help them actually leave Gaza and then also travel through other countries in order to be able to get to the UK,” Ms Cooper said. “But that work is underway and I’m determined to make sure that we can do our bit to help those injured families and also to help students get into their courses this autumn.”
A small number of children have been brought to the UK privately by the charity Project Pure Hope, set up by volunteer medical professionals, but the Israeli Government must give the green light for evacuations.
This is the first time children will be brought to Britain for treatment on the NHS. Each child would be accompanied by family members if necessary, with biometric data collected in a third country.
It is not known how many children are in the first group, although previous reports have suggested it could be between 30 and 50.
Keir Starmer promised Mirror readers in July that he would act to help more sick and injured Palestinian children, saying the public were “sickened” by what is happening in Gaza.
And last month, the Government said it would set up a scheme to bring children to the UK for free medical care.
A Foreign Office source said: “We are working with the WHO (World Health Organisation) to get critically ill and injured children into the UK where they will receive specialist NHS treatment, with the first patients expected to arrive in the UK in the coming days.”
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