Gaza faces public health disaster, UN humanitarian office says

An Israeli soldier aims his weapon as Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances wait on December 13, 2023. (AFP)

• Israel's forced displacement of 85 percent of Gaza population has caused overcrowding in shelters and other temporary living facilities

GENEVA: The UN humanitarian office said on Wednesday that Gaza faced a public health disaster due to the collapse of its health system and the spread of disease amid an offensive by Israel that has hit hospitals and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The United Nations and aid groups have sounded the alarm about the spread of infectious disease in Gaza, where the internal displacement of 85 percent of the population has caused overcrowding in shelters and other temporary living facilities.
Israel, which went to war in Gaza after the Palestinian enclave’s ruling Hamas militants launched a devastating attack on its southern communities on Oct. 7, has told civilians to flee battle zones and says it seeks avert humanitarian distress.
“We all know that the health care system is or has collapsed,” said Lynn Hastings, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“We’ve got a textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster.”
WHO has reported a sharp rise in acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, lice, scabies and other fast-spreading diseases.
Hastings said people in Gaza had to line up for hours just to access a toilet.
“You can imagine what the sanitation conditions are like,” she said.
WHO said on Tuesday that only 11 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were partially functional, one in the north and 10 in the south of the enclave.
In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said field hospitals had been erected within Gaza by the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
“We offered every possible help (and) we are prepared to do more,” Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Reuters.
“But one thing has to be clear. There is overlapping between medical system and hospitals and Hamas terrorist activities,” he said, reiterating Israeli allegations — denied by Hamas — that the Palestinian militants have been operating within hospitals.
“So this is not something that we will tolerate.”
Hasting said that almost half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million was now in Rafah in the southern tip of the enclave to escape Israeli bombardment.
“This is leading to nothing but a health crisis,” she said. (Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, Editing by Kirsti Knolle and Angus MacSwan)