A Perfect Storm: The Escalating Crisis of Antimicrobial Resistance in Surgical Wounds in Gaza
Antimicrobial Resistance in Gaza
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33687/ricosbiol.03.010.86Keywords:
antimicrobial resistance, Gaza, surgical site infection, conflict medicine, war wounds, global health security, infection prevention and control, multidrug-resistant organismsAbstract
The Gaza conflict has precipitated a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, creating an ideal environment for the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This review synthesizes evidence from humanitarian reports, medical testimonials, and preliminary data to analyze the multifactorial drivers of AMR in surgical wounds. The collapse of healthcare infrastructure, critical shortages of antibiotics and supplies, the impossibility of infection prevention and control (IPC), and the unique nature of war injuries converge into a perfect storm. With laboratories destroyed and antimicrobial stewardship abandoned, clinicians are forced into empirical, often ineffective antibiotic use, rapidly selecting for resistant pathogens like multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. The consequences are increased morbidity, amputations, and mortality for patients, while posing a severe threat to global health security by creating reservoirs of untreatable infections. This review concludes that the situation in Gaza represents a profound failure of medical ethics and international law, demanding urgent, coordinated intervention to prevent a long-term AMR catastrophe.
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References
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Copyright (c) 2025 Hussein Abouelhag
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
