A woman sits with children outside, as displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strike, shelter in a camp in Rafah, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip, December 6, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
- Countries propose motion to boost medical access
- Resupplying Gaza is ‘extremely difficult’: WHO chief
- Tedros praises countries for reaching agreement
- U.S. envoy did not oppose the motion
GENEVA, Dec 10 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization chief said on Sunday it will be all but impossible to improve the “catastrophic” health situation in Gaza even as the board passed an emergency WHO motion by consensus to secure more medical access.
The health situation in Gaza is a disaster, with most of the population homeless, little electricity, food, or clean water, and a medical system facing collapse.
The emergency action, proposed by Afghanistan, Qatar, Yemen, and Morocco, seeks passage into Gaza for medical personnel and supplies, requires the WHO to document violence against healthcare workers and patients and to secure funding to rebuild hospitals.
“I must be frank with you: these tasks are almost impossible in the current circumstances,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Still, he commended countries for finding common ground, saying it was the first time any U.N. motion had been agreed by consensus since the conflict began.
Tedros told the 34-member board in Geneva that medical needs in Gaza had surged and the risk of disease had grown, yet the health system had been reduced to a third of its pre-conflict capacity.
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician who heads the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees with 25 teams working in Gaza, said: “Half of Gaza is now starving.”
He said 350,000 people had infections including 115,000 with severe respiratory infections and lacking warm clothes, blankets and protection from the rain.
He said many were suffering from stomach complaints because there was little clean water and not enough fuel to use to boil it, risking outbreaks of dysentery, typhoid and cholera.
“To add insult to injury, we have 46,000 injured people who cannot be treated properly because most of the hospitals are not functioning,” he said.
BOMBARDMENT
Gaza hospitals have come under bombardment and some have been besieged or raided as part of Israel’s response to Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attacks.
A WHO database shows there have been 449 attacks on healthcare facilities in Palestinian territories since Oct. 7, without assigning blame.
Tedros said that it would be hard to meet the board’s requests given the security situation on the ground and said he deeply regretted that the United Nations Security Council could not agree on a ceasefire in Gaza following a U.S.