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A Palestinian child who lost her arm during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza arrived in the UK for specialist treatment on Tuesday, amid ongoing pressure on the British government to step up efforts to help evacuate critically ill and injured children from the territory.
Mariam Sabbah arrived at Heathrow airport with her mother, Fatma Salman, and two brothers. They were met by a small crowd bearing gifts, balloons and bouquets.
The family had been hoping to go to the US for treatment – but since the Trump administration halted visitor visas for all Palestinians in August last year, they have been stuck in limbo in Egypt.
“We’re happy that we’re here, we never thought we would actually be here in the UK,” said Salman, as her children stood nearby with wide smiles. “They were a bit nervous at the beginning, but now when they feel like everyone is around them, they are happy and excited.”
10-year-old Mariam, whose arm was amputated after a missile tore through the family’s home in Deir al-Balah, is one of more than 11,000 patients who have been evacuated from Gaza, according to the WHO. The health agency estimates 18,500 patients are in need of urgent care that does not exist in Gaza.
While the UK government announced a medical evacuation scheme last year, Mariam arrived in the UK for privately funded specialised treatment with assistance from the US-based NGO FAJR Global and Project Pure Hope (PPH). The UK-based charity PPH has helped evacuate patients and their families to the UK since 2025, on a model that served as the blueprint for the government scheme now operating in parallel.
Three families the charity had helped evacuate were among the crowd welcoming the family, as was Soad Abuhemaida, 28, who arrived in the UK in November from Gaza as a scholar.
“When I heard that there was a girl coming in a few days and she’s going to get medical care from the UK it really made me feel happy,” said an emotional Abuhemaida, whose family remains in Gaza. “I feel what she’s feeling now because I was in her shoes.”
Aid organisations have called on the UK government to increase their efforts, as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday that it would suspend medical evacuations after a contracted worker with the organisation was killed.
Mosab Nasser, co-founder of FAJR Global, said more lives would be lost as a result of the WHO decision.
“Because of the war on Iran and the closure of all the border crossings with Gaza, evacuations have actually been halted for a long time,” said Nasser, who arrived with the family from Egypt. “We haven’t been able to evacuate anyone since the war on Iran.”
The UK government scheme, created off the back of Project Hope’s private pathway to provide critically ill and injured children in Gaza with NHS care, relies on the WHO to provide a list of patients identified as priority cases by medical specialists in Gaza. The cases are then reviewed and decided by a team of NHS leaders.
The evacuation process, often long and arduous, requires coordination from the WHO and Israeli authorities, and had led to an extremely limited number of medical evacuations, before the health agency announced their suspension until further notice.
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians, said the WHO announcement exposed how fragile and unsafe the limited evacuation pathways were without a real ceasefire.
“The UK government and other governments must move beyond limited evacuation pledges and exert meaningful pressure on Israeli authorities to permit the unrestricted entry of aid, reopen all crossings and allow humanitarian agencies allowed to operate at scale,” he said.
“Without urgent action to uphold international law, we will see more preventable illness and deaths.”
Since October 2023, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have assisted the most number of patients medically evacuated from Gaza, according to the WHO, followed by EU countries, Jordan and Turkey.
When the UK government scheme was announced in August last year, a senior Whitehall source told the Sunday Times that up to 300 seriously ill children would be evacuated. Campaigners subsequently told the Guardian they hoped at least 100 would be assisted, saying that people would die waiting.
So far, the number of children evacuated with their immediate families stood at 50, a government spokesperson said. They did not comment on how the scheme would be affected following Monday’s announcement.
“We’re hugely grateful that some children have already come over on the government scheme,” said Omar Din, a co-founder of PPH, who welcomed Mariam and her family with a bouquet in hand. “I think it would be great for the UK in its tradition of being a charitable and humanitarian-focused country to do more of this work.”
“We’ve certainly done it recently with Ukraine,” added Din, a NHS primary care healthcare executive. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t do more of it here.”
