Professor Roberts says that what the Ministry of Health in Gaza publishes about deaths may be an underestimate (French)

A senior American academic with extensive experience in the field of field measurement of deaths in crises confirmed that the numbers published by the government Ministry of Health in Gaza regarding war casualties there are accurate and flawless.

Professor Les Roberts, an epidemiologist and honorary professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, said in an article in the American "Time" magazine that what the Palestinian ministry in Gaza publishes about deaths may be an underestimate.

Hopkins University and London College

Professor Roberts, who participated in measuring deaths in crises in many countries of the world, pointed out that last December, the medical journal “The Lancet” published two articles on monitoring deaths in Gaza, the first of which was conducted by scientists with great experience at Johns Hopkins University. "American, and the other was conducted at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

They both concluded that Gaza's numbers were reasonable and credible.

He explained that Hopkins' analysis looked at internal aspects of the data, such as comparing hospital trends reports on overall numbers and death rates among United Nations employees with the Ministry of Health's overall reports in terms of death trends and mechanisms.

Unusual comparisons

He drew attention to the fact that there is a large number of United Nations employees in Gaza, and there are very close relationships between the death rates of these employees and the total population, and the number of residents who die under bombs in their homes.

As for the London School's analysis, it looked at some of the same issues and found an almost perfect correlation between government bombing reports and satellite images, but it focused on the 7,000 deaths reported through health facilities and morgues last October.

He said the data analyzed by the London group came directly from many health facilities and morgues, and made up most of the summary figures later released by the Ministry of Health, and the group concluded that there was unlikely to be fabrication of the data.

Other evidence goes beyond the previous two assessments

However, Professor Roberts stressed that the evidence supporting the reliability of the death toll in Gaza Ministry of Health reports goes beyond these two assessments.

In 2021, an evaluation of the Ministry of Health’s death monitoring system in Gaza found that the number of deaths in the system was an underestimate by 13%.

In previous crises, MSF and UN reports closely agreed with those of this ministry, despite Israeli denials.

Roberts stated that most countries in the world usually record much less than 87% of their deaths, but Gaza has several characteristics that make surveillance work well: a high population with higher education, and a short distance for people to reach health facilities.

He said that a USAID-funded evaluation in 2014 found that 99% of births were supervised by a trained health professional, compared to about 80% globally.

He said that the death toll in wars has always been a political issue and a subject of disagreement and conflict, but what is comforting is that usually, over time, reality and science have a way of gaining acceptance, sometimes even during the ongoing conflict.

Source: Time