<\/p>\n
21 June 2024<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gaza is \u201ca world of devastation\u201d and still in the grip of war after nearly nine months of conflict, UN humanitarians just back from the enclave reported on Friday, as they described widespread destruction and stories of pregnant mothers forced to request preterm C-sections out of desperation and fear.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe population has been\u00a0almost entirely dispossessed<\/strong>\u00a0of the means and capacities to ensure food security, shelter, health, and livelihood,\u201d said Maryse Guimond,\u00a0UN Women<\/a>\u2019s<\/em> Special Representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory. \u201cWomen were asking me, \u2018When can we go back to our homes?\u2019 Each displacement has brought more loss and fear.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to journalists in Geneva via video, veteran humanitarian worker Ms. Guimond described seeing people \u201ccrammed\u201d into makeshift shelters and lacking even the most basic essentials. At one school-turned-shelter run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA<\/a>), there are\u00a0only 25 toilets for the 14,000 people seeking safety inside the compound and the 59,000 others<\/strong>\u00a0camping outside, she noted.<\/p>\n Pointing to the \u201cenormous\u201d problems of access to Gaza\u2019s last functioning hospitals today, Dr Rik Peeperkorn from the UN World Health Organization (WHO<\/a>)<\/em> reported that the enclave\u2019s health workers, obstetricians and doctors now treat far higher levels of low birthweight babies than before the war.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see a lot of preterm babies and low birthweight babies and you see that often in times of conflicts, war\u2026but we even had the stories where\u00a0women were going when they had access to the hospital would ask for an early Caesarean to make sure that they deliver and deliver safely<\/strong>\u00a0because they were completely unclear and they were scared about the access, if they would be able to access the hospital later, because of the volatile security situation and the constantly changing situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the risks of giving birth in Gaza today for mothers and their babies in a place where \u201cthere is hardly any antenatal care\u201d, the WHO medic highlighted the \u201camazing\u201d amount of\u00a0trauma cases, amputees and patients with chronic health conditions<\/strong>\u00a0who urgently need to be evacuated out of the enclave for treatment.<\/p>\n Since war erupted on 7 October after Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, roughly 4,800 patients have been evacuated out of medical necessity from Gaza, most to Egypt and elsewhere in the region.<\/p>\n But \u201cat least another 10,000 patients\u201d now need specialist treatment outside the enclave, Dr Peeperkorn said \u2013 \u201chalf of them related to the war and half of them related to what we call the chronic diseases: …cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other non-communicable diseases, including severe mental health cases\u201d.<\/p>\n Some 50 to 100 medical evacuations used to happen regularly from Gaza to hospitals in the West Bank before the war, the WHO official explained, as he appealed for the reopening of Rafah border crossing in the south of the enclave, or for nearby Kerem Shalom to be used instead.<\/p>\n The UN health agency also pushed back at Israeli Defense Force (IDF) claims that recently announced pauses in fighting have led to an improvement in the humanitarian situation.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the reason is that this humanitarian pause was not reflected on the ground; there was not a single day where we could be able to say we are going to take advantage of this humanitarian pause\u2026to bring from Kerem Shalom the supplies that are waiting for us,\u201d said Dr Thanos Gargavanis, WHO trauma surgeon and emergency officer.<\/p>\n The UN aid coordination office,\u00a0OCHA<\/a>,<\/em> echoed those concerns and insisted on Israel\u2019s responsibility under international humanitarian law as the occupying power to ensure that relief supplies including fuel reach those who most need it, including by addressing the \u201ccomplete destruction of law and order\u201d and reports of looting.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, we welcome any initiative that aims at facilitated aid delivery and we did reach an understanding with COGAT on coordinated movements intended to facilitate safe movements of humanitarian aid,\u201d said spokesperson Jens Laerke, referring to the Israeli body overseeing deliveries.<\/p>\n \u201cIn reality, as we hear from the ground, it has come to very little<\/strong>. Fighting in the area might have reduced as a result of those coordinated movements but it is not the only impediment for our colleagues to pick up aid in the area between Kerem Shalom and the Salah Al Din road.\u201d<\/p>\n Echoing those concerns, WHO\u2019s Dr Gargavanis said that the impact of the closure of the Rafah crossing, the increase in fighting and the continued forcible displacement of Gazans meant that what is achieved in Gaza \u201cis only a fraction of what we should be doing\u201d.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cI know that we are saying this repeatedly over and over again. However, everybody needs to understand that for every international (worker) that is now entering in the Gaza Strip, the process is long, risky, and it requires a huge amount of resources\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, through Kerem Shalom, we have to lead ourselves, we have to drive the armoured vehicles ourselves to make sure that international community continues to go in and rotate out of the Gaza Strip. This is just one of the major issues that we’re facing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 21 June 2024 Gaza is \u201ca world of devastation\u201d and still in the grip of war after nearly nine months of conflict, UN humanitarians just back from the enclave reported on Friday, as they described widespread destruction and stories of pregnant mothers forced to request preterm C-sections out of desperation and fear. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[2477,2545],"document-source":[6852,6169],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2517,1769,2033,2005,1741,1745,1841],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-297306","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-news-item","document-category-un-news-item","document-source-un-news","document-source-united-nations-department-of-global-communications","document-subject-access-and-movement","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-children","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","document-subject-women","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/297306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/297306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297312,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/297306\/revisions\/297312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=297306"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=297306"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=297306"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=297306"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=297306"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=297306"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=297306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Dignity, privacy gone<\/strong><\/h2>\n
C-section desperation<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Medivac appeal<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Fractional benefits<\/h2>\n