Ichilov hospital confirms soldier badly injured in Gaza died of severe fungal infection

A soldier seriously injured in Gaza earlier this month died from a severe fungal infection, Ichilov Hospital confirmed on Thursday.

"The soldier in question did indeed die in Ichilov Hospital from an invasive fungal infection," Ichilov Hospital infectious diseases specialist Dr. Eugene Katchman told The Times of Israel Thursday.

The IDF confirmed the soldier's death but said its cause was still under investigation.

The IDF told The Times of Israel that as far as it is aware, this is the only case of a soldier infected with a potentially lethal fungus. The military is not sharing the date of the soldier's death.

Israeli media reports on the case on Tuesday claimed that some 10 other soldiers are believed to have the same fungal infection and are being treated for it in Israeli hospitals. This has not been confirmed by the IDF or Israeli medical centers.

The IDF said the source of the fungus may be from Gazan soil, but it is still under investigation.

Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod told The Times of Israel on Wednesday that while the soldier who died was initially treated there, he was subsequently transferred to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, where he died. A spokesperson for Assuta declined to provide any dates related to the soldier's arrival at Assuta or transfer to Ichilov for privacy reasons.

The Health Ministry issued a statement to The Times of Israel saying that serious injury affects the immune system, increasing the risk of infections.

"This is a phenomenon known to the medical world and it also happens in cases that are not related to battlefield injuries. In the case of serious and complex injuries in the field, the source of infections can be the soil, but this is not a new occurrence nor something only related to Gaza," the statement said.

IDF troops seen operating in the Gaza Strip in a handout photo released December 25, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

News that one or more wounded IDF soldiers are being found to have severe infections has the public on edge about what this could mean for the rest of the ground forces, the hostages being held in Gaza, and Israel's public health.

While the unsanitary conditions in Gaza can pose a threat to the health of wounded soldiers and hostages, Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, an epidemiologist who heads Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's School of Public Health, said that untreatable infections are not a particular danger for the Israeli public.

Prof. Nadav Davidovitch (Courtesy of Ben-Gurion University)

According to Davidovitch, the kind of antimicrobial-resistant infections that wounded soldiers could bring back from Gaza are not generally something that those who are not immunocompromised or have intact skin need to worry about.

"We are talking about a soldier who was in the field for weeks or months and then was seriously wounded by, say, a blast that broke his bones and tore his skin open," Davidovitch said.

"If he is lying in contaminated dirt — possibly by sewage — his wounds can be infected. We saw this in previous wars. This is not something new," he said.

Davidovitch emphasized that it is critical to evacuate wounded soldiers to a medical facility as soon as possible to mitigate the possibility of infections and noted that the IDF is doing well in this regard.

According to Davidovitch, microbes (fungi, bacteria, parasites, and molds) are specific to their environment. For this reason, those in Gaza are different from those found in Israel, but they are not necessarily any stronger.

"However, fungi are very tricky to deal with. They should not be in the blood, so when wounds allow them to enter the blood, it can end up being a real problem," Davidovitch said.

He doesn't expect to see any fungus outbreaks in Israeli hospitals as a result of soldiers coming back with such infections, as long as staff take prescribed precautions, follow good lab techniques, and do proper monitoring.

He told The Times of Israel that he has heard of a few cases of severe bacterial and fungal infections among injured soldiers. He said that hospitals are reporting on this and that the data will be compiled and presented at meetings of leading infectious disease physicians next week.

A boy looks at piles of garbage littering the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 4, 2023, during the Israel-Hamas war. (MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)

"Although what happened to the soldier who died is horrible and tragic," those kinds of infections play a bit role compared to the really serious injuries many soldiers are sustaining, Davidovitch said.

In terms of Israel's public health, the humanitarian crisis among Gaza's 1.9 million internally displaced residents poses a much greater risk of disease spreading to Israel than the fungi entering soldiers' wounds.

"We should be more concerned about a lack of plan to deal with the public health in Gaza as a strategic issue for Israel's public health," Davidovitch said.

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