Diseases resistant to antibiotics are spreading across Gaza Strip, 'alarming' research reveals

Gaza is facing a new threat as diseases resistant to antibiotics spread across the devastated territory, research has revealed.

- Jason Burke

With medical supplies desperately scarce, tens of thousands of people injured and many others weakened by malnutrition, high levels of drug-resistant bacteria will mean longer and more serious illnesses, a more rapid transmission of infectious diseases and more deaths, experts said.

The findings, revealed yesterday in a peer-reviewed research comment published in the Lancet, are the first since the conflict began in October 2023 to suggest a prevalence of multi-drug-resistant bacteria in Gaza.

"This will mean longer and more serious illnesses and a high risk of transmission to others. It means an increased risk of death from really common infections. It means more amputations. It's a horrible picture," said Krystel Moussally, an epidemiology adviser to Médecins Sans Frontières and a co-author of studies on drug-resistant bacteria in Gaza and other conflict zones in the Middle East, who was not involved in the research.

The study is based on more than 1,300 samples from al-Ahli hospital, home to one of Gaza's few microbiology laboratories that is still functional. Two-thirds of the samples, taken from patients over 10 months last year, showed the presence of multidrug-resistant bacteria.

Bilal Irfan, one of the authors of the study, described the results as "particularly alarming".