Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom have signed a new humanitarian declaration aimed at supporting children injured in Gaza, with a focus on emergency surgical care, treatment for wounded children and long-term support for child amputees who will require prosthetic limb replacement as they grow.
The initiative was reported by Yaffa News Network under the headline “Saudi-British humanitarian partnership to care for amputee children in Gaza”. Additional reporting from the Saudi Gazette confirms that the declaration was signed in London by Dr Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, Supervisor General of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, and Jenny Chapman, the UK Minister for International Development at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, during the Global Partnerships Conference 2026.
For the orthotics and prosthetics community, the announcement is significant because it recognises a reality that is now central to Gaza’s health crisis: many injured children are not only surviving severe trauma, but will require years of surgery, rehabilitation, prosthetic fitting, replacement, psychological support and long-term follow-up.
According to the Saudi Gazette report, the joint declaration will expand a Saudi–British strategic partnership to fund and implement humanitarian projects dedicated to caring for injured children in Gaza. The initiative will support emergency surgical care, treatment for the injured, healthcare infrastructure, infection prevention and control, operational support and training for medical personnel. The projects are expected to be implemented by Imperial College London.
The inclusion of child amputees is especially important. Children who lose limbs require a different model of care from adults. Their prosthetic needs change as they grow, meaning sockets, components and alignment must be reviewed and replaced regularly. A prosthesis fitted today may become inappropriate within months or years. Without structured follow-up, children can develop secondary complications including pain, deformity, gait problems, overuse injuries and reduced participation in school and play.
The scale of Gaza’s paediatric injury burden has drawn repeated warnings from humanitarian organisations. Save the Children has reported that explosive weapons left an average of 15 children a day with potentially life-changing injuries in 2024, while medical experts have warned that Gaza’s children are facing complex blast injuries, amputations, malnutrition-related wound problems and limited access to specialist care.
For IMEA CPO readers, the issue is not only emergency surgery. It is the entire rehabilitation pathway after traumatic limb loss. A child with an amputation may need:
This is why the Saudi–British declaration should be viewed as part of a broader rehabilitation response, not only a surgical aid package. Surgery can save life and limb, but prosthetic and rehabilitation services help determine whether a child can return to movement, education, family life and social participation.
The long-term nature of paediatric prosthetic care is often underestimated. A growing child may require multiple prostheses before adulthood. Each replacement requires clinical assessment, funding, technical fabrication, alignment, training and monitoring. In Gaza, where healthcare infrastructure has been severely damaged and access to medical supplies remains restricted, maintaining such a pathway will be extremely difficult without sustained international support.
The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund has also highlighted this need through its SANAD Children’s Amputee Program, which focuses on comprehensive medical care, rehabilitation, prosthetics and mental health support for wounded Palestinian children with limb loss. Such programmes underline the same principle: child amputee care cannot be delivered through one-off interventions. It must be continuous, multidisciplinary and developmentally appropriate.
For regional rehabilitation planners, Gaza is now a major test of whether humanitarian systems can properly integrate prosthetics and rehabilitation into emergency response. Too often, rehabilitation is treated as a later-stage service, after food, shelter, trauma care and hospital stabilisation. But for children with limb loss, delay can permanently affect mobility, confidence, musculoskeletal development and independence.
The Saudi–British initiative also points to the importance of international partnerships that combine funding, surgical expertise, rehabilitation planning, training and institutional support. Gaza’s needs are too large for any one organisation to address alone. Effective care will require coordination between governments, humanitarian agencies, hospitals, prosthetic and orthotic teams, rehabilitation specialists, paediatric surgeons, psychologists and local health workers.
For the IMEA region, this partnership carries several important lessons:
Gaza’s child amputees will need support for years, not weeks. The success of this Saudi–British partnership will therefore depend on whether it can build a sustained pathway from emergency treatment to long-term rehabilitation and prosthetic care.
For the orthotics and prosthetics sector, the message is clear: paediatric prosthetic provision in conflict settings must be treated as essential healthcare. A child who receives emergency surgery but no rehabilitation remains at risk of long-term disability, exclusion and preventable complications. A child who receives coordinated surgery, prosthetics, therapy and psychosocial support has a better chance of rebuilding mobility and life after injury.
As Gaza continues to face one of the most severe paediatric trauma and rehabilitation crises of modern times, the Saudi–British declaration represents an important step. The challenge now is to ensure that prosthetic care, rehabilitation and long-term follow-up remain central to the response — because for injured children, recovery does not end when the wound closes.