Gaza (Union)
A large number of displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were infected with smallpox and skin diseases in light of the health disaster and the spread of infectious epidemics, with the deterioration of medical equipment and the urgent need for new equipment to save the infected and wounded who are arriving in large numbers. This came as the World Health Organization considered that despair is increasing. In hospitals in the Gaza Strip, there is severe hunger.
The director of Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Gaza, Marwan Al-Hams, said that large numbers of displaced people were infected with smallpox and skin diseases, in light of the health disaster and the spread of infectious diseases in the Strip.
Al-Hams stressed that a health and humanitarian catastrophe is imminent, if there is no urgent intervention to stop the bombing, pointing out that the medical equipment has collapsed and that the sector is in dire need of medical equipment to save what can be saved from the sick and injured.
Earlier, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that the risk of death from starvation has become real in Gaza, and demanded that humanitarian aid reach all children and families in the Strip quickly and safely.
In turn, the World Health Organization announced that it led a mission to barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza over the weekend, and described the growing desperation and hunger that prompted residents to seize supplies from an aid truck.
The Director-General of the Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the United Nations organization and its partners delivered aid, including fuel, to the destroyed Al-Shifa Complex in Gaza City, which was previously the largest and most advanced medical facility in the Palestinian Strip.
Tedros explained that “participants in the December 23 mission witnessed increasing desperation due to acute hunger.”
He added: The partners demand an immediate increase in food and water to ensure the health and stability of the population.
Tedros warned that the continuing hostilities and the huge number of wounded had exhausted the Al-Shifa Complex.
The UN official expressed his hope that the delivery of 19,200 liters of generator fuel the day before yesterday would help resume vital services in the hospital, which can currently only provide “the simplest first aid,” stressing the need for more.
The facility, which was severely damaged and whose oxygen station was destroyed, provides refuge for about 50,000 displaced people, according to the hospital administration.
Sean Casey, a WHO emergency medical team coordinator who participated in the mission, described crowded surgical wards.
At the same time, Casey said in a video clip filmed inside Al-Shifa, where crowds of displaced people, most of them children, had taken refuge, that “everyone we talk to is hungry,” warning of the risk of famine.
In an indication of the difficult situation, residents snatched food aid from a truck on its way to the hospital, according to the World Health Organization. The Director-General said, “In light of the severe food shortage, the search for food forces people into horrific states of hunger and causes some of them, out of desperation, to take supplies from delivery trucks.”
“I can only imagine the torment that would push people to this point,” he continued.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned, “The dire situation in the Shifa complex is a microcosm of the nightmare that the people of Gaza are experiencing, where severe shortages of medicines, food, energy, water and – above all – safety leave residents at risk.”
The World Health Organization said that the joint mission also went the day before yesterday to the “Friends of the Patient Charitable Hospital,” which is run by a non-governmental organization and provides maternity, trauma, and emergency care, but it lacks specialized surgeons, an intensive care team, antibiotics, and basic relief medicines.
The mission also visited Al-Sahaba and Al-Helou International Maternity Hospitals, which assist in about 35 births daily, while facing shortages of fuel, food, water, oxygen, antibiotics, and anesthesia.
“Hospitals should be places of care and recovery, not places of constant danger and suffering,” Tedros said.
He reiterated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza, stressing the need for continued access to humanitarian aid.
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