11/28/2024–|Last updated: 11/28/202411:33 PM (Mecca time)
On Thursday, the World Health Organization described the situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip, especially its northern part, as “catastrophic,” warning that it suffers from an acute shortage of medicine, food, fuel, and shelter, calling on Israel to allow more aid to enter it and facilitate humanitarian operations there.
The organization’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that when Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip more than a year ago, almost all those displaced due to the conflict took refuge in public buildings or resided with relatives. He added that 90% of them now live in tents.
Ghebreyesus warned, in a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva, that “this makes them vulnerable to respiratory and other diseases, while cold weather, rain, and floods are expected to exacerbate food insecurity and malnutrition.”
Ghebreyesus said that the situation is particularly horrific in northern Gaza, where the Israeli army began a large operation early last October.
A report prepared with the support of the United Nations warned earlier this month that the specter of famine looms over the northern Gaza Strip, where bombing and fighting have intensified and the arrival of food aid has almost completely stopped.
This week, a team from the World Health Organization and its partners visited the northern Gaza Strip for three days and visited more than 12 health facilities.
Ghebreyesus said that the team saw “a large number of trauma patients and an increasing number of people with chronic diseases who need treatment,” stressing that “there is an acute shortage of basic medicines.”
The Director-General pointed out that his organization “is doing everything we can – everything Israel allows us to do – to provide health services and supplies.”
For his part, Rick Pepperkorn, the representative of the World Health Organization in the Palestinian Territories, told reporters that out of 22 missions to the northern Gaza Strip for which requests were submitted in October, only 9 missions were facilitated.
He added that a mission is scheduled to be conducted next Saturday to the only two hospitals that are still operating “at a minimum” in the northern Gaza Strip, which are Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital, expressing his hope that this mission will not be hampered.
Pepperkorn said that these two hospitals “need everything,” and they suffer in particular from a severe shortage of fuel, warning that “without fuel, there are no humanitarian operations at all.”
On the positive side, Peppercorn said that the World Health Organization this week facilitated the evacuation of 17 patients from the Gaza Strip to Jordan, 12 of whom are supposed to go to the United States to receive treatment.
He explained that these patients are among about 300 patients who have been able to leave the Gaza Strip since Israel closed the main Rafah border crossing in early May.
However, about 12,000 patients are still waiting in the Gaza Strip to be evacuated for medical reasons, according to Peppercorn, who called for providing safe corridors to remove patients from the Gaza Strip, stressing that if the situation remains as it is, the organization will be busy “for the next ten years.”