UNICEF today warned of the health tragedy or ‘perfect storm’ brewing in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of fuel and water.
“If there is not enough fuel, we will see the collapse of sanitation,” United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesman James Elder said via videoconference from Cairo.
The spokesperson warned that an outbreak of disease will be inevitable given the situation in the Gaza Strip.
“We have a cruel lack of water. Excrement covers densely populated areas. There is an unacceptable lack of latrines,” he described, quoted by the French agency AFP.
Elder said it is very difficult to practice personal hygiene or even wash your hands in Gaza, where Israel launched a military operation in the wake of the bloody Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
In Israel, 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the unprecedented Hamas attack and about 240 people were taken hostage, according to authorities.
According to Hamas, more than 13,300 people were killed in Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip, including more than 5,600 children.
“If children’s access to water and sanitation in Gaza remains limited and inadequate, we will see a tragic increase (…) in child deaths,” the UNICEF spokesperson warned.
“Children are therefore at serious risk of a massive epidemic,” he stressed.
World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Christian Lindmeier said there are currently no traces of cholera in the Gaza Strip, where the bacteria that cause the disease were not present before the start of the war.
However, he emphasized that the watery diarrhea suffered by thousands of very physically weak people is just as dangerous.
Source: DN
