A Gaza mortality survey carried out by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) finds that, for children under five, rates have increased tenfold for the October 2023—March 2025 period over the pre-October 2023 period. The rate for newborns (babies not yet a month old) went up six times, and the overall rate for the whole population was five times. They surveyed 2,523 people. (And of those 2,523 respondents, 9% of them ended up as casualties—7% wounded and 2% dead.) Further, three-quarters of the deaths were from blast injuries and almost half of those (48%) were children. Of the children, most of them (83% of that group) were under 10 years old.
Were the 2,523 respondents a crude representative example of the total Gaza population of 2.2 million, it would extrapolate to around 44,000 deaths during that period—a rough correlation with the Gaza Health Ministry’s account from the end of March 2025. Now, in July, the GHM count is over 57,000.
