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Health officials and relief organizations said that infectious diseases are devastating Gaza’s population GazaAs a result of the cold, wet weather, overcrowding in shelter centers, scarce food, dirty water, and lack of medicine.
In a report published by the New York Times, treatment options for those infected with infectious diseases are very limited, as hospitals were crowded with people injured in Israeli air strikes during more than two months of war.
The newspaper quoted Samah Al-Farra, 46 years old and a mother of ten children, as saying that she is struggling to care for her family in a camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah, south of Gaza.
She added, “We are all sick. All of my children suffer from high fever and a stomach virus.”
The report indicated informing Global Health Organization There have been at least 369,000 cases of infectious diseases since the start of the war, based on data collected from the Ministry of Health in Gaza and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), pointing to an astonishing increase over what it was before the war.
However, this very high number announced by the World Health Organization fails to capture the scale of the crisis, said Shannon Barclay, leader of the health systems team in the organization’s offices in Gaza andWest BankShe added that the aforementioned number does not include cases in northern Gaza, where the war destroyed many buildings and what remained of the exhausted health system.
Barclay noted that the most common diseases spreading throughout Gaza are respiratory infections, which range from the common cold to pneumonia. She added that even usually mild diseases can pose serious risks to Palestinians, especially children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised, given the difficult living conditions.
Unsanitary conditions
In turn, the newspaper quoted a woman named Samah in statements over the phone that her family had been sleeping on the ground since they fled from Khan Yunis, in the north. Rafah, A week ago. She said that she and her children had a high fever and suffered from persistent diarrhea and vomiting over the past three days.
She added that she and her family, like many others in the devastated Strip, were drinking the same foul-smelling water they used to wash themselves with. She said, “When I wash my hands, I feel that they become dirtier and not cleaner.”
The newspaper quoted Marie-Uri Periot-Rival, emergency coordinator at the organization Doctors without bordersSpeaking from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, she said that the few hospitals still operating were focusing on providing care for patients suffering from severe injuries as a result of air strikes.
She added that many of these patients receive post-operative care in unhygienic conditions, which leads to severe infections. She said that the primary health care system in central Gaza has completely collapsed, leaving those in need of basic medical care without treatment.
Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, director of the Martyr Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said last Sunday that the small hospital was accommodating hundreds of displaced people, and that they were sleeping on the floors where the wounded were also being treated.
He added that these floors had not been cleaned for weeks, because hospital staff were “unable to find cleaning materials.”
He said that malnutrition had become “out of control,” and cases of anemia and dehydration among children had nearly tripled.
The New York Times concluded by saying, “I have no idea how to help my children. Now I go around knocking on people’s houses and begging for clean water.”
