 Hello, you're watching Daily Debrief. It's been 150 days since Israel's genocidal war on Gaza began, 150 days of utter impunity and contemptuous dismissal of calls from across the world to halt this atrocity. The death toll has crossed 30,500 and close to 72,000 people have been injured. Thousands are missing. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies continue their steadfast support of Israel, locking calls for a ceasefire, parading Israel's claims of self-defense and refusing to acknowledge the thousands of deaths in extremely brutal circumstances. We go to Abdul for the latest on this war. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. It's been 150 days since the war began and the brutality is continuing. Of course, a couple of days ago, we saw a horrible massacre of people who were waiting for food aid, some even humanitarian assistance has become part of the death toll, so to speak. So, could you maybe now take us to what is the situation with the war, especially the Israeli offensive at this point? Well, Prashant, in the last 24 hours, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed and as you rightly pointed out, there was yet another attack on the Palestinians who were seeking aid in the Gaza city. So, the killing in the last week of more than 100 people, Palestinians again in Gaza city is basically repeated despite the global condemnation, despite the attempt by the Israelis to say that what happened in the last week was basically the fault of the Palestinians themselves who basically in a desperate way stampede and created a situation, a chaotic situation which led to the killing of people. But the repeat and again, there are reports coming that most of the people who were killed were killed by the Israeli gunfire and even tanks were involved. So, that is what is happening. Apart from that, there are also reports coming that a large number of Palestinian children are now subjected to malnutrition and death because of the lack of food. The number of Palestinians as per the latest report has reached 16. Palestinian children, I am saying, who have died because of the confirmed cases of malnutrition, lack of food and so and so forth. So, the humanitarian aid which was now there was a spectacle made last week of U.S. kind of air dropping aid, Jordanian's air dropping aid. In fact, this air dropping is basically looks like a kind of attempt to hide the global failure of pressurizing Israel to kind of allow more and more humanitarian aid on the ground so that the Palestinians, millions of them who are not able to get enough food get it and that basically affecting their health and particularly the health of the children. So, that is what is happening in the Gaza Strip. In fact, there are reports that despite the warnings again in terms of Rafa, Israeli forces were involved in bombing Rafa in the last 24 hours and dozens of people have been reportedly killed in those strikes which were carried out in Rafa in the last 24 hours. So, yeah. So, if you see, there is all the set patterns which are there since October 7, Israelis dropping bombs on the Palestinians, Israelis not allowing humanitarian aid to reach to the affected people and kind of particularly targeting Palestinian children continues and the situation is as I said before is same as we discussed previously. In this context also could you tell me a bit about what has been the discussion around the truth, the discussions have been going on for quite some time now. Every couple of days media reports seem to indicate there is some proximity to a settlement but nothing has been finalized yet. Well, as far as the dialogues are concerned, there are clear reports that though there are parties discussing the truth in Cairo, particularly what US Vice President Kamala Harris said on Sunday about the kind of need of a kind of ceasefire, which later she clarified that she is not talking about a permanent ceasefire. Only for six weeks during the Ramadan and extra days ceasefire, there is a progress on that. But as far as Israelis are not participating in it, the Israeli media is reporting that Israeli delegation has not been sent and it will not be sent as per the latest reports. So, whatever discussions are there, whatever terms are there in the public, it seems that Israelis do not agree with them with those terms. And despite the US claims, despite the claims made by Egyptians and other parties involved, it seems the Israelis are not ready to talk at this moment. And that is the latest situation. If you see in terms of aggression, not only in Gaza but in other parts of Palestine also, the Israelis have not taken any steps to kind of bring any confidence that they are willing to kind of halt their aggression and willing to have some kind of event temporary ceasefire at this moment. Thank you so much for that update. A study by University of Oxford researchers has revealed that privatization of hospitals leads to worsening health care outcomes for patients. The study conducted across various high-income countries found that in some cases, higher levels of privatization would even link to higher rates of avoidable deaths. We go to Anna to find out more about this study. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. A study which I guess its outcomes are not really surprising for those who follow this show, for those who have been working in the field of health activism like you. But first of all, could you maybe take us through what are the key findings of this study? Well, as you said, it's not really surprising, it's something that as activists, that's people who have been following health from a health for all perspective, we have been saying all along. And that is that unsurprisingly privatization of health does not work. It does not work as a regular good on the market. It cannot be left to market forces in order for it to function and to fulfill the role of supporting people's right to health, of giving them the chance to lead a better life. So what this recent study did is was looking at some of the previously done analysis of health systems in high-income countries and specifically at cases where previously public health services, including primary health, but also including hospitals, have been privatized and how that has impacted outcomes and quality of care primarily. And so what it shows is that of course, once something is privatized, that overwhelmingly you see a reduction in the number of staff, you see a reduction in accessibility for people. And so essentially what you see is a fall of the quality of care for patients. And that's interesting because it's something that's usually used as an argument in favor of privatization when those who want to privatize health systems approach governments when they approach the people. The first thing that they say is your health system is going to be more functional, it's going to work easily, it's going to be more accessible to you if we privatize because the public sector is so cumbersome, it's so slow, it doesn't actually work. So if we privatize, it's going to look better. Now what this research shows is that it's essentially the opposite. So while public systems do struggle because they are underfunded, because they're very big systems, which are very difficult to organize and to make sure that they can function on an everyday basis. Because the private sector puts highlight on profits instead of health, it turns out that they cut on some of the very elementary issues including pace, including the number of nurses and of non-medical health staff, which are working with patients. And more often than that even, they tend to cut the number of cleaning staff, of technical staff. And this of course has also impacts on quality of care, but it's not something that they're really prone to say openly. So essentially when you cut the number of cleaners at the hospital, you are putting people at a very great risk of contracting hospital infections. That's something that this research also points out. In this context of course, another key aspect is that even within this study privatization probably there are some winners and some losers when it comes to privatization. It's a very clear class angle as well. So you can talk a bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. So you know this is again something that we have seen over time is that when advocates of private healthcare come and point out the so-called good examples of how private care has improved accessibility and communications among the health system and patients, what they often overlook is that the private health system caters to a very specific crowd. So it's rich people. It's people who can afford private healthcare, who go to private healthcare. Now of course, because of the whole background of social determinants of health, we know that rich people or even middle-class people are of better health than of poorer communities. So of course, if you tend to attract people who can pay for healthcare, to begin with you are set to attract people, patients who are in better health. So of course, it's reasonable to assume that the care that you will provide them will be less expensive. It will take less time. It will be easier to sort out and you can focus on those aspects of care, which can generate much, much bigger profits for you. On the other hand, if you're a public health system, you care for everyone. And because of these influx and the strengthening of the private health sector, you tend to get patients who are in extremely vulnerable health positions who did not have the chance to care for their health before. So they're also more prone to turn up with very complicated health issues, which take a long time to address if they can be addressed at all. So it's kind of not essentially showing that the successes of the private health system, if there is, comes because it's actually, it's very specific to a particular population. And finally, I guess the key question often after studies like this is that is there really an alternative, especially considering the spree of privatization that has taken place over the past few decades with austerity policies with neoliberalism. So are there any examples of this process going in the reverse? Well, yes, I think it's fair to say that yes, there is. And while this study, it has to be said, it focused particularly on countries from the global north. So it's a bit different than if we look at the global picture. But if we look at the global picture, we do see people's initiatives to take back healthcare all over the place. So people have been essentially, they've been very vocal about the effects that the privatization of healthcare is having on their health status. So we've seen from alternative attempts to organize healthcare come up in Belgium, you know, through medics for the people who are trying to rebuild and to operate within a system, which is not really people-oriented to begin with. But then we have seen a range of cases, you know, along the tracks of deprivatization and remunercialization from other parts of what used to be a public sector and people taking back hospitals, people taking back health centers, people standing up to the closure of local health institutions. So that's definitely something that's going to be an interesting thing to follow as privatization pressures continue. Right, thank you so much, Anna for the analysis. Thanks. And that's all we have in today's day, lady. Briefly back to the new episode tomorrow. In the meanwhile, do visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.