The plight of dying Gazan children who charities are struggling to bring to UK

The UK has said it will look at any applications to take in Gazan children who need medical treatment – but charities and a leading paediatrician say they've been "stonewalled" when trying to apply.

Produced by Roohi Hasan and reported by ITV News Correspondent Rachel Younger

This week a video arrived in my inbox showing a shiny haired boy celebrating his birthday.

Nabeel was sitting on a hospital bed and trying to wave his arm in time to music blaring out from a plastic speaker. On the sheets in front of him, sat a small cake with wobbly candles. 

The little boy with the serious face was turning five. Always a healthy child, he was diagnosed with cancer as Israel began its assault on Gaza, in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7.

Chemotherapy for children like him is no longer available in the few hospitals left, but barely functioning, in the territory. 

His Palestinian doctors have spent months doing what they could, while NHS medics logged on to FaceTime at the end of their shifts to try to offer advice. 

Meanwhile a British charity, Children Not Numbers, sent innumerable emails to government officials in Israel and Egypt, which control the border, to try to get Nabeel out of Gaza.

Driving the effort, was Somaya Ouazzani, a British lawyer, who made phone call after phone call, often while nursing her own young baby. 

Finally, she got the news that Nabeel’s route out had been approved.  But the day after he was told he was heading to safety, Israel closed Gaza’s border crossings. 

Somehow Nabeel made it through another few weeks to mark his 5th birthday. Four days later, on Friday 31st May, he died. 

Somaya has assessed hundreds of cases. But this one hit her particularly hard. Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital told her that children being treated for similar cancers there have a survival rate of over 80%. 

“Every single day we hear of a child that has died because they haven’t been able to access the medical treatment that they needed; in circumstances where, anywhere else in the world, they would have survived” she said. 

It is too late for Nabeel but Somaya shows me a second video. It’s almost unbearable to look at. 

On the screen is a small child immaculately dressed in a smart yellow dress. But her skin is almost the same colour and her belly is so swollen her dress can’t stretch over it. Every day doctors are having to pump bags of fluid out of her stomach and the pain is clear on her face. 

Sadeel was just a few weeks old when the war in Gaza began …  now doctors believe she has only days to live. She needs an urgent liver transplant and although both her parents are matches, no one has been able to get them out to a country that could help. 

Great Ormond Street paediatrician Dr Omar Abdel Mannan, who is also the co-founder of  Heath Workers for Palestine, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to bring the sickest children to the UK for treatment. 

He tells me those funds mean no extra pressure would be placed on the NHS, because enough money is available to pay for private treatment.

Now, he’s speaking out because he believes it’s not only Israel’s closure of crossings that's frustrating attempts to help. 

Charities like Children Not Numbers have worked hard to get visa applications ready to go, so potential patients can take advantage of any break in the fighting.

Dr Krish Kandiah, from Project Pure Hope told ITV News: "I have witnessed firsthand the incredible compassion of the UK government and public working together to support Afghan and Ukrainian refugees.

"Despite our best efforts we have been unable to help any critically injured Gazan children. All the funds have been raised, and the hospitals are willing to help, but there has been no political will to make the visas available.

"We need moral courage from our government to do the right thing and help children in desperate need."

But ITV News can find no evidence or sign of the UK granting a single visa for a sick or injured Gazan child. 

“We have enough funds to cover a handful of children to come across for treatment and we made that very clear in our application to the Home Office” said Dr Abdel Mannan.

 “Yet despite that offer of covering all their costs, there has been no response from the government. We have been completely stone walled”.

It was February when the UK Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, first told Parliament he was ready to help. 

Encouraged by that comment, we know of at least 2 charities that submitted visa applications to get children needing urgent treatment to the UK. 

One, which has been shared with ITV News, was delivered as an emergency application to the Home Office in early March.

But on May 13th, two months after it was submitted a minsters speaking on behalf of the Home Office told a parliamentary debate on Palestinian visas “We have not received any specific applications. If applications do come forward they will be treated with the utmost seriousness”.

The Home Office told ITV News that applications are only judged as submitted when a child or parents travel to a Visa Application Centre for passport and visa checks. 

The reality is that has long been a near impossible task in Gaza. 

Yet in recent months ITV News has travelled with injured children on evacuation flights not just to neighbouring countries like Qatar but further afield to Italy, one of a number of European countries to offer Gaza’s children medical care. 

The IDF told us it takes every feasible measure to mitigate harm to civilians. 

But children like Sadeel are in desperate need of a lull in the fighting so they can get out. And with hospitals in neighbouring countries like Egypt already at their limits treating the sickest and most injured from Gaza, she also needs other countries further afield to be willing to take her in.  

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