As part of a package of support for children in Gaza wounded by explosive weapons, Community Jameel kicked off a new partnership with the Centre for Paediatric Blast Injury Studies during a visit to Imperial College London today. The centre, which launched in March 2023 as a collaboration between Imperial and Save the Children, is the world’s first research hub for treating and better understanding child blast injuries, bringing together medics, engineers, pain specialists, operational humanitarians and prosthetics and rehabilitation experts.
Community Jameel will support the centre in conducting pioneering research into the treatment of child blast injuries as part of its current support to Save the Children in response to the Gaza emergency. The package also includes support for training up to 100 clinical staff in Gaza to provide specialist treatment and care for up to 100,000 children injured by explosive weapons, and distributing 2,000 Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manuals to frontline health workers engaged on Gaza.
Medical staff need to take complex decisions in the horrors of war and the Paediatric Blast Injury Field Manual supports clinicians to make informed decisions by providing a durable, easy-to-use, illustration-based guide. Training on the application of the manual for clinical staff in Gaza through this initiative will help inform these decisions and take life-saving action through an approach already being used in 13 conflict zones around the world, including Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. The Centre for Paediatric Blast Injury Studies builds on the work of the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership that produced the field manual.
The need for this initiative is pressing. The death toll from the conflict in Gaza is now reported to be around 7,000 children and is continuing to rise at a rapid pace, with many more experiencing life-changing blast and crush injuries.
Visiting the centre at Imperial, George Richards, director of Community Jameel, met with Professor Anthony Bull, director of the centre and professor of musculoskeletal mechanics at Imperial, and Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon who was until recently operating at Al Ahli hospital in Gaza before he was evacuated. Professor Abu-Sittah is also director of the conflict medicine programme at the American University of Beirut and an honorary senior lecturer at Imperial.
George Richards, director of Community Jameel, said: “Children are seven times more likely than adults to die from blast injuries, and the horrifying toll in Gaza reflects this. With Community Jameel’s support, Save the Children is equipping first responders in Gaza with the tools and training to treat children injured by explosive weapons – and now we are supporting cutting-edge research at the Centre for Paediatric Blast Injury Studies to unlock new advances and to save more children’s lives.”
