Infectious
diseases are ravaging the population of the Gaza Strip, health officials and
aid organizations said Monday, citing cold, wet weather; overcrowding in
shelters; scarce food; dirty water; and little medicine.
اضافة اعلان
Adding
to the crisis in the enclave after more than two months of war, those who
become ill have extremely limited treatment options, as hospitals have been
overwhelmed with patients injured in airstrikes.
“We
are all sick,” said Samah al-Farra, a 46-year-old mother of 10 struggling to
care for her family in a camp housing displaced Palestinians in Rafah, in
southern Gaza. “All of my kids have a high fever and a stomach virus.”
While
the collapse of Gaza’s health system has made it challenging to track exact
numbers, the World Health Organization has reported at least 369,000 cases of
infectious diseases since the war began, using data collected from the Gaza
Health Ministry and UNRWA, the U.N. agency that cares for Palestinians — a
staggering increase from before the war.
And
even the WHO’s extraordinarily high number fails to capture the scale of the
crisis: Shannon Barkley, the health systems team lead at the World Health
Organization’s offices in Gaza and the West Bank, said it does not include
cases in northern Gaza, where the war has destroyed many buildings and what
remains of the health system is overwhelmed.
The
most common diseases raging through Gaza are respiratory infections, Barkley said,
including colds and pneumonia. Even normally mild illnesses can pose grave
risks to Palestinians, especially children, older adults, and the
immunocompromised, given the dire living conditions, she said.
Farra,
speaking by phone, said her family had been sleeping on the ground since they
fled Khan Younis, a city just to the north of Rafah, a week ago. For the last
three days, Farra said, she and her children have had high fevers and suffered
from persistent diarrhea and vomiting.
Like
many others in the battered enclave, al-Farra said that she and her family had
been drinking the same foul-smelling water that they used to wash themselves.
“When
I wash my hands, I feel like they get dirtier, not cleaner,” she said.
Her
youngest child, 6-year-old Hala, spent the majority of the last three days
sleeping and was too weak to ask for food after weeks of going hungry, Farra
said. “She used to beg for more food, but now she can’t even keep anything
down,” she said. Her 9-year-old son, Mohammad, has been having seizures, likely
from his fever, she added.
The
Israeli military announced on Monday that it was opening a second security
checkpoint at the Kerem Shalom Crossing — on the border between Israel, Gaza,
and Egypt — to screen humanitarian aid arriving via Egypt, a move meant to
allow more food, water, medical supplies, and shelter equipment into Gaza. Aid
organizations have said that the rate of aid coming into Gaza since the
collapse of a temporary cease-fire earlier a week and a half ago has been far
from enough.
Hospitals
that are still considered to be functioning are focused on providing critical
care for patients with trauma injuries from airstrikes, according to Marie-Aure
Perreault Revial, an emergency coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, who was
speaking from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. But many of those patients
receive postoperative care in unsanitary conditions, resulting in severe
infections, she said.
And
the primary health care system in central Gaza has completely collapsed, she
said, leaving those in need of basic medical care without treatment.
“There
is a very big focus on the wounded and the injured patients, but it’s the
entirety of the health care system that is just being brought to the ground,”
she said.
One
Gaza resident, Ameera Malkash, 40, said that when she first took her pale and
jaundiced son, Suliman, to a hospital in Khan Younis last month, it was overrun
with casualties from airstrikes that day. They were not able to see a doctor.
They
tried again the next day, she said by phone, and the doctor told them it was
hepatitis A — a liver infection caused by a highly contagious virus that
spreads easily through contaminated water. Suliman was supposed to quarantine,
but there were no rooms left in the hospital, Malkash said, so they had little
choice but to go back to a shelter crammed with thousands of other people.
Last
week, the Palestinian Authority’s health minister, Mai Alkaila, said about
1,000 cases of hepatitis A had been recorded in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian
Authority’s health ministry is based in the West Bank and operates separately
from the health ministry in Gaza.
Dr.
Marwan al-Hamase, the director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said
on Sunday that his small facility was accommodating hundreds of displaced
people and that they were sleeping on floors where wounded people were also
being treated. Those floors have not been cleaned in weeks, he said, because
“we are unable to find cleaning products.”
Malnutrition
has become “beyond control,” and anemia and dehydration cases among children
have nearly tripled, al-Hamase said.
Milena
Murr, a spokesperson for the relief agency Mercy Corps, said that when her
colleagues in Gaza fled their homes two months ago, they did not prepare for
weather that has turned cold and rainy. Many did not bring blankets, jackets,
or warm clothes.
Displaced
people taking refuge in U.N.-run shelters have been sharing bathrooms without running
water. And fecal matter accumulating on the streets can contribute to the
spread of disease and further contaminate water sources, Barkley, of the WHO,
said.
Firas
al-Darby, 17, who is at a U.N. school-turned-shelter in the south, said that
he’d had a fungal infection all over his body for weeks. “Bacteria, filth,
disease, and epidemics are all over the school,” he said.
Hala
al-Farra also had a skin rash, her mother said, as well as lice. Farra added
that she was considering cutting off Hala’s hair because she could not afford
shampoo.
“I
have no idea how I will help my kids,”
Farra said. “I am now going around knocking on people’s homes and
begging for clean water.”
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