The Government will not use Jordan as an evacuation route to get very sick children out of Gaza, despite the Taoiseach saying use of the border crossing, which is preferred by Irish doctors, “is not an issue for us at all”.
On Wednesday the Chief Medical Officer and officials at the Department of Health met Health Service Executive and Children’s Health Ireland staff who have been working on securing the safe evacuation of sick children from Gaza to Ireland.
CHI and the HSE were told the department would not consider Jordan as an evacuation route for a planned operation to get children out of Gaza in the autumn.
It likely means eight children medically identified by CHI staff for evacuation to Ireland in June may not be able to travel here due to the difficulties they may face travelling from Gaza to Egypt via the Rafah crossing.
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Since May, the HSE and the CHI have told the Government that Jordan is a better route because a higher quality hospital in its capital, Amman, means Ireland would be able to evacuate much more seriously ill children.
It is understood that medics involved in previous evacuations have had to choose children with lower complex needs due to some of the limits of the healthcare available to them if they are evacuated via Cairo.
It is also understood that the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the European Union’s Emergency Response Co-ordination Centre (ERCC) support Ireland using Jordan as an evacuation route instead of Egypt.
On Wednesday, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald asked Taoiseach Micheál Martin to include Jordan in the medical evacuation of children from Gaza. In response, Mr Martin said: “We work with Jordan on a continuing basis wherever the children are. There is no issue for us in terms of the particular border crossing, the mechanism or the route out of Gaza. That is not an issue for us at all.”
In a statement, the Department of Health said it was agreed at the “constructive” meeting on Wednesday to use the established pathways in Egypt “to expedite the logistical arrangements for the next medical evacuation of paediatric patients, their carers and families.” Egypt has been used as a route for two operations in December and May, which brought 12 paediatric patients as well as their carers and siblings to Ireland.
“There is still a long list of World Health Organisation-identified paediatric patients needing medical evacuation from Egypt. The HSE and CHI will work with the WHO on the ground to identify paediatric patients for medical evacuation to Ireland and put in place the necessary logistics for a medical evacuation through Egypt in the early autumn,” it said.
In the Dáil on Thursday Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris said the Government is “fully committed” to the medical evacuation of 18 more Palestinian children to Ireland for treatment.
He said the “ask” originally was for “one child accompanied by one parent or one guardian”. He said this doesn’t always work in practice, and 12 children came with accompanying adults, to bring the total to 45 people.
“So we’ve gone beyond one plus one for good humanitarian reasons. And the Minister for Health and the Minister for Justice have indicated that they just want to have absolute clarity on that,” Mr Harris said, adding this “will not cause delay”.
He said he and the Taoiseach discussed the issue on Monday and are “fully committed to the medical evacuation programme”.
