On 13 August, Italy welcomed 31 Palestinian children seriously injured or suffering from urgent medical conditions, together with 83 accompanying persons for a total of 114 people transferred from the Gaza Strip to Italian hospitals. The initiative, in the pipeline for several weeks, had been authorised by Minister Tajani during an operational meeting on the situation in the Middle East and the emergency in Gaza on 30 July.
This is the 14th medical evacuation conducted by our country since January 2024, the largest ever. With this mission, the total number rises to 181 patients and 396 accompanying persons who arrived in Italy, for a total of 577 people evacuated with medical missions. Italy is now the country that, between bilateral evacuations and collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) started in May 2024, has carried out more operations than the entire EU combined, and ranks fourth in the world.
Patients were selected by the WHO in Gaza on the basis of the most urgent priorities verified on the spot. Almost all of the evacuated children have suffered amputations or severe injuries, head trauma, brain haemorrhage, leukaemia, or are suffering from congenital diseases or severe malnutrition. All conditions that would not have found adequate care in the Gaza Strip. Now they will be taken care of by hospitals in Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Tuscany, Umbria and Veneto.
The mission was made possible thanks to a choral effort that united the women and men of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Ministry of Defence and the Interforce Summit Operations Command (COVI), the Ministry of the Interior, the Civil Protection Department, together with local authorities, health personnel and hospital facilities in eight regions. Three Crisis Unit officials worked in the field, together with two officials from the Italian Consulate General in Jerusalem. Also present were five Civil Protection operators and more than twenty doctors, nurses, health personnel and linguistic mediators.
The mission began on 12 August, with the arrival of an advance team in Eilat, Israel, to coordinate every phase of the operation, thanks also to diplomatic contacts with the Israeli authorities ensured by the Italian Embassy in Tel Aviv. The following day, other operators arrived with two military flights from Cairo. From early morning, the teams followed the convoy from the Kerem Shalom crossing, after Israeli controls, to Eilat military airport on buses and ambulances provided by the WHO.
After the identification and assignment of the patients in Israel, and a five-hour flight on board C-130J military aircraft of the Air Force to Milan, Rome and Pisa, on arrival in Italy a cordon of ambulances and doctors immediately started the transfer of the children to the destination hospitals.
The reception of the patients and families is now entrusted to the hospitals and then to the Ministry of Interior’s Integrated Reception System for accommodation. They will all obtain residence permits, so that children and families will have access to the Italian school and health system, to ensure a harmonious integration and a dignified stay as long as necessary.
