Dina Mahmoud (London)
“Being a Gazan these days is an ordeal, but if you are a woman, your ordeal will be much greater.” This is the voice of Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip, and they face suffering that they say is greatly greater than what men endure, in light of the war that has been going on there for more than three months.
In addition to the life-threatening dangers facing the people of Gaza in general, and the scarcity of food, water, and basic services, in addition to the destruction that befell their homes that forced them to flee from them, female Gazans suffer additional hardships, including a severe lack of their needs for personal hygiene supplies, which are directly related to Their ability to maintain health and avoid diseases, in light of the deteriorating living conditions in the Strip.
Experts warn, in statements published by the American National Public Radio website, that the lack of health care products, coupled with the limited ability to access running water or use toilets in places of displacement, exposes women in Gaza to the risk of contracting many diseases.
The website quoted a spokesman for UNICEF as stressing that the current predicament represents a “challenge of a special nature” for women and teenage girls in Gaza, who lack “safe, private and appropriate places” to deal with their personal hygiene needs.
In addition, overcrowding in temporary shelters such as schools, hospitals, youth centers, and others, leads to pregnant women and women who have just given birth, and who suffer from postpartum hemorrhage, going through another crisis, as they cannot easily find the running water they need near them, in light of the arrival of a number The displaced people in Gaza are approximately two million people, i.e. more than 85 percent of the population of the Strip, which makes one toilet serve 400 people or more sometimes.
Testimonies from Gaza indicate that women residing in shelter centers usually wake up very early in order to be able to use the toilets and shower, and to protect their privacy at the same time.
Even the residents of Gaza who are still residing in their homes have begun to host their displaced relatives from other places, which reduces the ability of women to use toilets on the one hand, and reduces the amounts of water available to them on the other hand, due to the measures to legalize use, which the residents of Gaza are forced to undertake. In the current period.
In light of the escalation of fighting and bombing, and the continuing restrictions on the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip, humanitarian agencies give priority to food and medical supplies in the shipments they send to the Gaza Strip, and not necessarily to goods such as personal hygiene supplies.
According to UNICEF, in the three months following the outbreak of the war, the organization in Gaza witnessed the distribution of more than 41,000 personal hygiene kits, including necessary products for women, but this does not seem sufficient to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of women currently displaced in the Strip. .
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