In front of a small room inside the outpatient clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern Gaza Strip, hundreds of children with skin diseases spreading throughout their bodies gather, waiting for a doctor to examine them, prescribe treatment for them, and reassure their companions.
Among these children, the most prominent case was the child Muhammad Daoud, who had pimples that appeared to be burns spread all over his body, and everyone was staying away from him for fear of transmitting the infection to them. After waiting for more than an hour, Daoud entered the room of the dermatology consultant, Dr. Amer Al-Masry, who stood in shock when he saw the skin infections spread across the child’s body from the bottom of his feet to his neck.
The Egyptian doctor took all his patients out of the room and began examining the child, Daoud, in a state of shock because he had never experienced this condition in his professional medical career in this way before.
The Egyptian doctor’s diagnosis showed that the child suffers from contagious bacterial bullous dermatitis, which is one of the most difficult infections because it spreads throughout the body from his head to his toes, and requires hospitalization and receiving intravenous treatments.
Outside the room, the Tel Aviv Tribune Net correspondent met with Suleiman, the father of the child Daoud, to find out from him the reasons that led to his son’s health condition being so serious.
Daoud’s father says, “We were displaced from the northern Gaza Strip in mid-October 2023 to the south, specifically the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Yunis. We lived in a nylon and plastic tent, and we transformed thousands of tents for the displaced.”
One month after the Daoud family was displaced, sewage water began flowing in front of their tent due to the absence of a suitable area for housing and the absence of any signs of infrastructure in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis.
The spread of diseases among the displaced
Suleiman and his six children lack any types of detergents and clean water for bathing and hygiene and to protect themselves from the spread of diseases that have begun to appear among the displaced due to the absence of hygiene tools and the presence of sewage everywhere.
Child Daoud is one of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip who have been infected with contagious skin diseases, as a result of the rapid spread of sewage, the lack of potable water, and the high prices of detergents if they are available in the Strip.
In addition to the child, Daoud, the child, Rozan Al-Hassi, has been suffering from the spread of a rare skin disease throughout her body and head for more than 4 months, without her family being able to obtain an accurate diagnosis of her condition or appropriate treatment.
Al-Hassi (12 years old) lives in a tent in the Deir al-Balah area in the central Gaza Strip after her family was displaced from Gaza City in October 2023, and with the war continuing and thousands of displaced people accumulating in the area where they built their tent.
In front of Al-Hassi’s worn-out tent, sewage flows morning and evening due to the lack of any infrastructure in the area to which her family was displaced, and the presence of thousands of tents and displaced people who also built plastic bathrooms and released their water into the streets.
Al-Hassi, as her mother Umm Yahya confirmed to Al-Jazeera Net, was afflicted with a skin disease that spread throughout her body, and no doctor was able to diagnose the nature of what was spreading in her daughter’s body.
Al-Hassi did not receive appropriate treatment because doctors were unable to diagnose her illness, and because many of the medications in the Gaza Strip pharmacies and hospitals ran out.
Umm Yahya says, “My daughter does not sleep because of the extreme agitation in her body, especially her head, during the night. I put olive oil for her, but it is of no use and there is no improvement in her condition.”
Unhealthy environment
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) confirmed that children in the Gaza Strip face difficult conditions amid skin diseases, an unhealthy environment, and endless hostilities.
The United Nations organization stated, in a post on its account on the “X” platform, that the children of Gaza face difficult conditions, including skin diseases and an unhealthy environment.
The United Nations confirms that the Gaza Strip markets lack sterilizers, personal hygiene materials and tools in light of the obstacles to the entry of supplies into Gaza.
The displaced also complain of their inability to meet their personal hygiene needs, the continued spread of infectious diseases, water pollution and the absence of sanitation services, according to the United Nations.
The World Health Organization also sounded the alarm about the rapid spread of infectious diseases in Gaza with the disruption of health facilities, water and sanitation networks, and called for accelerated humanitarian access to various parts of the Strip, including fuel, water, food and medical supplies.
The organization warned that damage to water and sanitation networks and a decrease in cleaning supplies made it impossible to adhere to basic infection prevention and control measures within health facilities, including among health workers.
According to the organization, there is a risk resulting from the cessation of routine vaccination work, the shortage of medicines needed to treat communicable diseases, and limited communications, which in turn restricts the ability to early detect potential epidemics.
The organization confirmed that, as of June 30, there were more than 100,000 cases of scabies and lice, 60,000 cases of skin rashes, and 11,000 cases of chicken pox in the Gaza Strip.
According to the organization, 8,944 cases of scabies and lice, more than a thousand cases of chickenpox, 13,000 cases of skin rashes, and 55,000 cases of upper respiratory infections were reported.
Epidemic disaster
Al-Masry confirms that there is an unprecedented spread of skin diseases in the Gaza Strip, and this is due to population crowding, the extreme heat during the summer, the lack of cleaning materials, and the spread of sewage among people and in public places, especially between tents.
Al-Masry told Al-Jazeera Net, “There are types of skin diseases among the displaced and residents in the Gaza Strip, which are stubborn and do not respond quickly to treatment, including bacterial, viral, and fungal infections of all kinds.”
Al-Masry explains that the most common types of skin diseases are bacterial infections, especially among children.
The dermatology consultant describes the health situation of the displaced people as an epidemiological disaster, especially with the proliferation of cases on a daily basis, the severe shortage of medicines, and the inability of the medical points deployed to diagnose these cases. The lack of medicines in the Ministry of Health and the inability of people to buy medicines leads to the spread of diseases, according to the Egyptian doctor.
Rodents and rats
Insects and rodents are widespread inside the tents of the displaced and among the destroyed homes in the Gaza Strip, which is one of the causes of skin diseases for thousands of residents, according to specialists.
In the middle of a destroyed neighborhood in the city of Khan Yunis, the Hamdan family was forced to live next to their house, which was subjected to Israeli bombing in December 2024.
The head of the family, Muhammad Hamdan, says, “There are huge amounts of rubble around us, and this has caused rats to spread widely. They have started sharing everything with us, even food, and they walk over our bodies while we sleep, and they put their feces everywhere in the tent.”
Hamdan’s four sons were not free from skin diseases due to the spread of rats in their tent, as Ahmed (15 years old) suffered from bacterial infections in his back, stomach, and feet.
Doctors diagnosed Ahmed’s bacterial infection as the result of an infection from an animal, according to his father’s assertions. Ahmed did not receive appropriate treatment with antibiotics to eliminate the bacterial infections spreading in his body, as they were not available because they ran out of medicine stores in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing war.
Veterinary medicine consultant Dr. Saud Al-Shawa confirms that there is a terrible spread of rodents, such as rats and mice, in the Gaza Strip due to the war conditions.
Rats and mice, according to Al-Shawa’s statement to Al-Jazeera Net, are carriers of infectious diseases, in addition to the great harm that these creatures cause to humans if they multiply in one place.
Rats contaminate the food of displaced people and residents with feces and urine, which may cause the transmission of some diseases to humans, such as plague, which is transmitted through the bites of fleas that live on infected rodents.
According to Shawa, rats also cause salmonella bacteria, which causes food poisoning, the Hanta virus, which is transmitted by inhaling aerosolized fine particles from the urine or feces of infected rodents, leptospirosis, which is transmitted through contact with water or soil contaminated with rodent urine, and rat bite fever, which It is transmitted through bacteria found in the saliva of rats that can infect humans through a rat bite and lead to a skin rash.
