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How the dead are counted
Healthcare workers like Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Médecins Sans Frontières plastic surgeon based in London who has been treating people at hospitals in Gaza City, are key to recording those figures.
He says the hospital morgue records deaths after confirming the identity of the dead person with their relatives.
The number of deaths registered so far, he believes, is far fewer than those that have actually occurred. "Most of the deaths happen at home," he says. "The ones we could not identify, we did not record."
However, once a body is found, it "has to be taken to the hospital to be recorded", says a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent.
To examine the health ministry's list, the BBC cross-referenced names included on it with the names of dead people who had appeared in our reporting. One of those deaths the BBC reported was Dr Midhat Mahmoud Saidam, who was killed in a strike on 14 October. The BBC spoke to his former colleagues.
Satellite imagery analysis carried out by the BBC showed damage to the area where he lived around the date of his death. An image posted on social media shows a body bag with his name and details written on it.
Similar work, but on a larger scale, is being done by Airwars. As part of its work investigating civilian deaths, it has matched names of the dead on the health ministry list with areas that have been bombed.
So far, Airwars has found 72 names on the ministry's list in five of the areas it has investigated, including Dr Saidham's.
Its investigation also found 23 of his family members had also died and all were recorded on the health ministry list.
