Untreated sewage and overcrowding are leading to the rapid spread of disease, while three-quarters of the Strip’s hospitals have stopped functioning.
by Ibtisam Mahdi, +972 Magazine
In late November, Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization, warned that without urgent action to repair the Gaza Strip’s rapidly collapsing health system, more people would soon die from disease than from Israel’s bombings. “[There are] no medicines, no vaccination activities, no access to safe water and hygiene and no food,” she said, summarizing the dire humanitarian conditions amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment and intensified siege.
Nearly a month later, the full extent of the crisis is still not being fully comprehended outside of the Strip, according to Palestinian health care professionals in Gaza. “The information, statistics, and news circulating worldwide only scratches the surface of the actual reality,” Dr. Adnan al-Wahidi, a child health expert from Gaza City, told +972. “It captures just a small fraction of the alarming health situation in the Gaza Strip.”
With Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion forcibly displacing nearly all of the Strip’s 2.2 million residents, there is unprecedented overcrowding in parts of southern Gaza — in particular the city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt, which is still being bombed despite the Israeli army having declared it a “safe zone,” and the coastal area of Al-Mawasi where there is very little infrastructure at all. Tens of thousands of families are sheltering in flooded tent encampments, while starving children queue for hours every day at food distribution centers.
Recent Posts
The Ancient History Of Socialism In North America
Take Action Now There was nothing simplistic about moving — in many ways back to earlier traditions — to a system of governance not…
New Mexico Is Providing Free Childcare For All. It’s Time For Others To Do The Same
Take Action Now The state is setting a powerful example with its first-in-the-nation plan. But the policy has support across the USBy Katrina…
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Supports Israel’s Genocide & Trump’s War On Venezuela
Take Action Now Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado is a far-right Venezuelan coup-plotter funded by the US government. She supports…
Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé: Despite Ceasefire, Palestinians Still Face “Elimination, Genocide”
Take Action Now “I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with…