WHO says 15 Gaza children going to Spain for urgent care

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that 15 children and one adult from war-ravaged Gaza were travelling from Egypt to Spain to receive care for complicated medical conditions.

The children were aged three to 17, and the mother of one of the children was also due to receive treatment in Spain, the UN health agency said.

"These very sick children will be getting the care they need thanks to cooperation between several partners and countries," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

The patients had been hospitalised in Egypt for several months after evacuating from Gaza, the WHO said, adding that they were among thousands of children and adults from Gaza in need to access specialised medical care outside of the Palestinian territory.

Hailing "the support and facilitation provided by Egypt and Spain", Tedros urged "other countries who have the capacity and medical facilities to welcome people who, through no fault of their own, are caught in the grips of this war".

The children, who were accompanied by 25 family members and other caregivers, had been in Egypt since before May 6, when the Rafah border crossing was closed, making evacuations all but impossible.

Only 23 people have been evacuated since then, via the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing, WHO said.

Since the war in Gaza erupted after Hamas's deadly October 7 attack inside southern Israel, around 5,000 people have been evacuated for treatment outside the territory, with more than 80 percent receiving care in Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, it added.

Wednesday's statement said that at least another 10,000 people were waiting for urgent medical evacuation from the Gaza Strip.

A top agency official suggested earlier this week that the number might have swelled to as many as 14,000.

The evacuated children "are just the tip of the iceberg", Hanan Balkhy, WHO's regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said in the statement.

The agency appealed for the establishment of multiple medical evacuation corridors from Gaza, including through Rafah and Kerem Shalom.

Of utmost urgency, it said, was "the restoration of medical evacuations from Gaza to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, where hospitals are ready to receive patients".

"Patients must also be facilitated to be transferred to Egypt and Jordan, and from there to other countries when needed."

Tedros hailed the solidarity shown in this case as "a bright spot in a war that has had so many moments of tragedy".

"The fact that severely ill people are receiving needed medical care should not be headline news, but routine global cooperation," he said.