Action Against Hunger said that the Gaza Strip is vulnerable to an unprecedented outbreak of diseases this summer due to piles of waste that are rotting due to high temperatures, which increases the tragedy of a population already suffering from food shortages.
Vienna Diamanti, project coordinator for emergencies at the NGO, told Reuters that waste management is one of the organization’s main concerns because it cannot be removed from the Strip and its residents cannot access waste dumps.
“This amount of solid waste throughout the Strip causes many problems related to hygiene and sanitation,” she told Reuters.
She added, “We fear the emergence of diseases that have not appeared before in the Gaza Strip and that they will affect the entire population, especially in the summer with high temperatures.”
Israel destroyed most of the Gaza Strip during its ongoing aggression, and the Gaza Ministry of Health says that more than 36,500 Palestinians have been martyred in the Israeli aggression on the Strip since then.
The European Commission-backed Copernicus climate monitoring service said on Tuesday that last month was the warmest May ever seen in the world, making it the twelfth consecutive month in which average temperatures recorded record levels.
Temperatures rose to 38 degrees Celsius in a heat wave that swept Gaza last summer, causing power outages for 12 hours a day.
Action Against Hunger also helps distribute drinking water to charitable kitchens and individuals, and distributes nutritional supplements to children and those exposed to vulnerable situations in the sector.
Diamanti said that the malnutrition rate in Gaza was only 0.8 percent before the war, but the situation has changed radically. She added that although there are no resources to collect the data necessary to determine whether there is a famine, people are already dying from diseases related to malnutrition.
She added, “We were forced to intervene to prevent and treat malnutrition, focusing primarily on children under the age of five and pregnant and breastfeeding women.”