Prince Harry and Meghan Markle donate £369k to help children from Gaza and Ukraine

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have donated £369,000 ($500,000) through their Archewell Foundation to projects supporting injured children from Gaza and Ukraine. The three grants from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's charitable foundation will help the World Health Organisation with medical evacuations and fund work developing prosthetics for youngsters seriously hurt in the conflicts.

The announcement coincided with Harry's visit to the Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College London on Wednesday, the third day of his four-day trip to the UK, where he heard more about its work focusing on injuries suffered by children and those sustained in natural disasters. In a statement shared on Archewell's website, Harry highlighted Gaza's record number of child amputees and warned: "No single organisation can solve this alone.

"Gaza now has the highest density of child amputees in the world and in history.

"It takes partnerships across government, science, medicine, humanitarian response and advocacy to ensure children survive and can recover after blast injuries."

The three Archewell grants include £145,600 ($200,000) for the WHO to support medical evacuations from Gaza to Jordan, £111,700 ($150,000) for the Save the Children charity to provide ongoing humanitarian support in Gaza, and £111,700 ($150,000) for the Centre of Blast Injury Studies to help its efforts to develop prostheses for injured children, particularly those children injured from the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

It follows a £1.1 million personal donation made by Harry to BBC Children in Need on Tuesday.

Harry opened the Centre for Blast Injury Studies in 2013, which was the forerunner of Imperial's new centre which was launched a few years ago on its White City campus.

During Wednesday's tour, Harry was struck by a demonstration of the centre's development of kits which can produce low cost external fixators used to treat bones which have been shattered by blasts or in natural disasters - including one that had been made in Gaza.

He was shown one from Gaza and told they were working to develop a 3D printed version.

After the tour of the research laboratories, Harry joined a roundtable discussion alongside representatives from Imperial, Save the Children, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to discuss issues facing children in Gaza and beyond, with a particular focus on medical evacuation, mental health, and long-term rehabilitation, hearing from Save the Children staff who shared frontline experiences.

Emily Mayhew, the paediatric blast injury lead at Imperial College London, told him: "We very much consider you part of our story."

The Duke then went on to reunite with his father, the King, for the first time in 19 months when they met for a private tea at Clarence House and also attended a reception linked to the Invictus Games.

Today, he is set to attend an event for the Diana award before heading back to Montecito, California.