Hospital Functionality in the Gaza Strip

Year: 2026
Section: Academic Research
Status: Published

Organization: University of Geneva — Institute of Global Health

Peer-reviewed article published in Conflict and Health, analysis of hospital system capacity across 35 facilities in Gaza over the first 13 months of conflict, using WHO HeRAMS and rapid response data.

Outcome: Found that hospital system functionality dropped to 13.9% by April 2024 and never exceeded 33% after December 2023, providing quantitative evidence of the systematic collapse of Gaza's health system.

Methods: Longitudinal data analysis, Spatial analysis, WHO HeRAMS database, Health systems monitoring

Problem

Gaza’s hospital system came under severe strain following the outbreak of conflict in October 2023. Systematic, longitudinal data on individual hospital functionality across all governorates was lacking, making it difficult to quantify the overall collapse of health system capacity over time.

Work

In 2023 as the WHO GIS Center data scientist in the WHO Emergency Operations Center, I created the original hospital status database the research was eventually based off of. I further contributed to data curation and methodology review for the multi-institutional study analyzing 35 public, private, and NGO hospitals from 7 October 2023 to 31 October 2024. The team combined WHO rapid response records with the Health Resources and Services Availability Monitoring System (HeRAMS) to build a longitudinal and spatial dataset of hospital capacity status, categorized as fully, partially, minimally, or nonfunctional.

Delivery

Published in Conflict and Health (Springer Nature, February 2026), the paper documents that 71.4% of hospitals were nonfunctional within weeks of conflict onset, with system-wide functionality peaking at just 33% for the remainder of the study period. The findings contribute to the evidence base on the impact of armed conflict on civilian health infrastructure.