Crippled Economy, Devastating Public Health Crisis Grips Gaza Amid Ongoing Israeli Conflict
The Israel-Hamas war has caused horrific human loss, sufferings and irreversible economic damage in the Gaza Strip since its inception on October 7 last year.
The ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza has created a dire public health crisis in the strip, with at least 1.5 million displaced individuals contracting infectious diseases, Anadolu Agency reported yesterday citing the Gaza Media Office.
According to the GMO statement, 1,477,748 Palestinian displaced persons have been affected by communicable illnesses due to the upheaval from various areas across Gaza. The staggering number of internally displaced people has now reached 2 million since the conflict escalated on October 7th.
The situation is especially dire for children, with UNICEF reporting that 9 out of 10 Gazan children are suffering from severe malnutrition. Additionally, 3,500 children are at risk of starving to death due to the blockade and ongoing military operations.
The statement also highlighted that 10,000 cancer patients require urgent treatment outside of Gaza, while over 71 cases of viral hepatitis, a highly infectious liver disease, have been recorded – particularly among children due to poor sanitation and overcrowding in displacement centers.
With the Rafah border crossing into Egypt closed since May 7th, no patients or wounded have been able to leave Gaza to seek critical medical care.
In the meantime, unemployment in the Gaza Strip has hit a “staggering” 79.1 percent since the outbreak of the war, according to the United Nations labour agency.
In its latest assessment of the impact of the war on employment, the International Labour Organization (ILO) also said on Friday that joblessness in the occupied West Bank, which has also been hit by the crisis, had also reached nearly 32 percent.
This brings the average unemployment rate across the occupied Palestinian territory to 50.8 percent.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in the southern city of Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
The United Nations has added Israel to the global list of states and armed groups who have committed violations against children, according to the country’s UN envoy, Gilad Erdan.
This came a day after the Israeli bombing of a UN school in central Gaza, which killed more than 40 Palestinians, some of them children.
More than 36,700 Palestinians, including over 13,000 children, have been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 83,500 others injured since October 7, local health authorities confirmed.
