GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) head said on Sunday it will be all but impossible to recover the “catastrophic” health situation in the Gaza Strip even as the board approved an emergency WHO motion by consensus to ensure more medical access to the enclave.
On the other hand, Palestinian authorities have also described a tragic health situation in the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s attack has left most of the people homeless, with no electricity, food, clean drinking water, and a health system facing collapse.
The emergency action, suggested by Qatar, Afghanistan, Morocco and Yemen, seeks passage into Gaza for medical supplies and personnel, needs the World Health Organization to document violence against health staffers and patients and to secure funding to reconstruct hospitals.
Gaza ‘Catastrophic’ Health Situation Impossible to Recover: WHO
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that these assignments are almost impossible in the present situation.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who heads the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees with twenty-five teams working in the Gaza Strip, stated that half of Strip is now starving.
Gaza hospitals and health centers have come under Israeli brutal bombardment and some have been besieged in the Gaza Strip. According to Reuters those hospitals that remain open are overwhelmed by the numbers of dead and injured arriving and sometimes operations are conducted without anaesthetics.
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According to WHO there have been around 449 assaults on health facilities in the Gaza Strip since October 7. The WHO chief said that it would be very hard to meet the board’s pleas given the current security situation on the ground and expressed deep regret that the UNSC could not agree on a truce following a U.S. veto.
Palestinian Minister for Health Affairs Mai al-Kaila condemned the critical shortages of medicines in the Gaza Strip.
