At least 1,360 doctors leave Israel since 2023 in healthcare brain drain
At least 1,360 doctors have left Israel since 2023, according to new research.
The number, equivalent to an entire hospital, refers to those doctors who left the country for a period of at least 12 months between 2023 and 2025.
The researchers recorded 416 departures in 2023, 530 in 2024, and what they said was an initial estimate of 419 in 2025.
Itai Ater, one of the professors who carried out the study, wrote that the country had been "losing its best people" since 2023, the year that Israel began its genocide in the Gaza Strip.
“All of us have family members waiting for surgery or other medical care," he said. "The departure of nearly 1,400 doctors translates directly into longer wait times, less effective medical care, and ultimately severe harm to our quality of life.”
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The report said rates were particularly high among paediatricians, ophthalmologists, dermatologists, and ear, nose and throat specialists.
No explicit link was drawn in the report between the political circumstances in Israel and the loss of doctors.
However, Ater warned that the exodus was harming the country.
“If this trend continues, heaven forbid, there is growing concern of irreversible damage to Israel’s resilience,” Ater said.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics has reported that at least 1,701 health sector workers were killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza between October 2023 and October 2025.
In June, more than 1,150 health professionals and organisations worldwide signed a petition calling for a boycott of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), accusing it of failing to uphold medical ethics over the war in Gaza.
The campaign called for the IMA to be suspended from the World Medical Association (WMA).
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