The Palestinian death toll from the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip had surpassed 40,000 as of Thursday, at a time when the Gaza ceasefire talks were set to resume in Qatar.
During the past 24 hours, the Israeli military killed 40 people and wounded 107 others, bringing the total death toll to 40,005 and injuries to 92,401 since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict broke out in early October 2023, Gaza-based health authorities said Thursday in a statement.
There are still many victims under the rubble and on the roads, with ambulance and civil defense crews unable to reach them, it added.
It took only five and a half months for the Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip to rise from 30,000 to 40,000.
According to an official, talks aimed at achieving a ceasefire in Gaza and an agreement for the release of hostages have begun in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
It is expected that David Barnea, chief of Israel's Mossad spy agency, will join representatives from the United States and Egypt, along with the Qatari Prime Minister, in the talks.
Palestinian death toll in Gaza exceeds 40,000 as peace talks renew
Hubei released China's first pricing program for medical services with brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies this week, accelerating the cutting-edge sci-tech's pace entering people's livelihood.
The Healthcare Security Administration of Hubei Province set the maximum prices for the implantation and removal of an invasive BCI implant at 6,552 yuan (about 899.7 U.S. dollars) and 3,139 yuan respectively, and the highest price for a non-invasive BCI adaptation service at 966 yuan.
The BCI technologies are bringing revolutionary changes in the treatments of many patients, according to Professor Jiang Xiaobing with the neurosurgery department under the Union Hospital affiliated to the Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
"For patients with hemiplegia, blindness, or aphasia, we can use BCIs to restore some of their physiological functions. And we can also use BCI technologies to treat patients with Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, or Alzheimer's disease. And currently we don't have very effective therapies to cope with these diseases. So BCIs are bringing hopes for these patients," said Jiang.
"The next three to five years are a critical period in our development of BCI technologies. Their applications to the treatments of, say, cancers and paralyses are definitely different, so relevant products have to go through corresponding procedures (before entering the end market)," said Jiang.
In March, the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) released a pricing guideline for neural system care services, specifying BCIs in an independent category.
According to the NHSA, this move aims to boost the clinical application of the cutting-edge technology to benefit patients in need, against the backdrop of BCIs' rapid development in recent years.
The guideline also outlines the pricing of invasive and non-invasive BCIs respectively based on the distinctive features of the two BCI approaches.
The guideline will pave the way for the swift translation of mature BCI technology into clinical use in the future, and offer a compass for localities nationwide to manage relevant medical services, said the NHSA.
China's first medical service pricing for brain-computer interfaces issued
