It operates under the jurisdiction of the territory's Hamas government, which is independent of the Palestinian National Authority, and was headquartered in Gaza City before the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war in October 2023.
[2][3][4] In relation to the Israel-Hamas war, two letters published in The Lancet journal did not find evidence of inflation or fabrication of Palestinian casualty numbers.
[5][6] A peer-reviewed analysis published by The Lancet in January 2025 concluded the GHM underestimated deaths due to traumatic injury by 41% in its reports on the Israel-Hamas war, with the total estimated traumatic injury deaths as of October 2024 exceeding 70,000 as opposed to the GHM's reported 41,909—59.1% of them being women, children and the elderly.
The new Gaza government, with Basem Naim as Health Minister, replaced Fatah-affiliated hospital directors and staff with those identifying with Hamas.
Jomaa Alsaqqa, a 20-year surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, lost his job due to his Fatah support and faced arrests and assaults since the Hamas takeover.
"[8] In 2023 officials said the ministry is a mix of recent Hamas hires and older civil servants affiliated with the secular nationalist Fatah party.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said "the numbers coming out of the ministry are not beyond reason", and noted a grey area in differentiating combatants from civilians among the dead, as well as emphasized that immediately released figures may often be different from those ultimately based on recorded data.
Most of those (55%) identified by the forms are men, Mr al Wahaidi said this is because it is mainly used by widows, who must register the deaths to receive government assistance.
[6] The authors also found that the number of buildings reported damaged by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Public Works was consistent with satellite imagery-based estimates conducted by Sky News (both arrived at the figure of 7%).
[6] In January 2025 a peer-reviewed analysis of deaths due to traumatic injury in the Israel-Hamas war between October 2023 and 30 June 2024 was published in The Lancet.
It also noted that its findings "underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation.
"[7] In March 2024 Columbia professor Les Roberts argued that GHM numbers were accurate, citing the two Lancet papers and other data.
[23] Professor Michael Spagat of research group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) stated that the GHM provides very detailed and real-time information about casualties in the war, that far exceeds the quality of reporting from conflicts such as Ukraine.
[24] He did note that this quality has declined over time, due to Israeli attacks on hospitals, and thus the GHM is relying on first responders and media sources.
Writing in April 2024, Spagat also noted the deteriorating quality of data with hundreds of duplicate, missing or invalid IDs, accounting for roughly 1/7 of the total.
[26] In October 2024 AOAV published a report based on the GHM's latest data concluding that at least 74% of the at the time 40,717 Gazan fatalities identified by the Ministry were civilians, and that even this is likely to be an underestimate.