UK urged to move fast after PM signs off on receiving wounded Gaza children

A British organisation bringing children from Gaza to the United Kingdom for medical treatment has called on the UK government to "urgently operationalise" a plan to bring 30 wounded children after the prime minister announced further evacuations late on Friday.

In a recorded video, Keir Starmer said that the UK had "put millions of pounds of aid into Gaza", including an extra £40m this year, but "that help is not getting in".

"So we are scaling up our work. We are accelerating efforts to evacuate children from Gaza who need critical medical assistance, bringing them to the UK for specialist medical treatment," he said.

Starmer's comments were welcomed by the UK-based Project Pure Hope (PPH), which brought the first two - and, so far, the only - Palestinian children from Gaza to the UK for treatment earlier this year in partnership with the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund.

The two girls, Rama, 12, and Ghena, five, came to the UK from Egypt with congenital conditions and have been receiving life-saving treatment in the private wings of leading London hospitals, funded entirely by charitable donations.

Over a month ago, PPH asked the government to help facilitate and fund a cohort of 20-40 acutely ill and suffering children to come directly from Gaza to the UK, and had been awaiting a decision. 

Now, with Starmer's sign-off, PPH is urging the government to move quickly, saying it has already paved the way for such evacuations with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Israeli and Jordanian authorities, and could activate its plan to bring the group of children immediately. 

"Time is of the essence," said Omar Din, one of PPH's co-founders. "Every day of delay risks the lives and futures of children who deserve a chance to recover and rebuild."

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