World Health Organization (WHO) stated that Gaza faces Looming famine, urging the expansion of land crossings to deliver aid. Efforts like air and sea deliveries are helpful but insufficient.
Children are suffering from malnutrition and disease due to limited access to essentials like water, food, and medical supplies. The situation is critical, with famine looming and millions at risk.
“Recent efforts to deliver food by air and sea are welcome, but only the expansion of land crossings will enable large scale deliveries to prevent famine,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday.
Children are dying from the effects of malnutrition and disease, and from a lack of adequate water and sanitation, Tedros said.
“The future of an entire generation is in serious peril,” he said. “Once again, we ask Israel to open more crossings and accelerate the entry and delivery of water, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid into and within Gaza.”
Jordan and the United States are dropping aid supplies from planes along Gaza’s coast. However, this method has been expensive and not very successful. Tragically, a parachute malfunction caused supplies to crash into a crowd near Gaza City, killing several people.
Israel is preventing most aid trucks from reaching Gaza by land. Since October 7, they have stopped food, water, medicine, and other essentials from entering, except for a small amount coming through Egypt and Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing.
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Aid agencies and health officials in Gaza have warned that this is not nearly enough to cover the needs of nearly 2.3 million people in the enclave, especially those in northern Gaza, where famine is “imminent”, according to Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
A serious lack of food, known as famine, may happen in northern Gaza by May and could affect the whole area by July, according to the Integrated Food-Security Phase Classification (IPC), which watches for hunger issues worldwide.
The World Health Organization (WHO) often asks to send supplies to Gaza, but these requests are frequently blocked or turned down.
‘Brink of death’
The IPC said 70 percent of people in parts of northern Gaza were suffering the most severe level of food shortage, more than triple the 20 percent threshold to be considered famine. In all, 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, about half the population, were experiencing “catastrophic” shortages of food.
Tedros earlier this month voiced concern over the situation, and said children are dying of starvation in Gaza’s north, citing a WHO team that visited two hospitals.
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Dr Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the WHO, said on Tuesday that increasing numbers of children in Gaza are on the “brink of death” from acute hunger.
As of now, the Health Ministry in Gaza reported that the Israeli air and ground attacks have killed at least 31,988 people and injured 74,188 others, including many women and children.
Additionally, there are more than one million displaced Palestinians in overcrowded camps in the southern city of Rafah, where Israel is preparing for a potential ground offensive.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Cairo in an effort to secure a truce between Israel and Hamas amid ongoing indirect ceasefire talks.
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According to UNRWA, as of March 16 up to 1.7 million people, or more than 75 percent of the population, had been displaced since October 7, some of them several times.
More than 60 percent of housing units have been destroyed, along with 392 education facilities, 123 ambulances and 184 mosques, it said.
The healthcare system in Gaza has essentially collapsed due to a lack of fuel to operate generators, as well as a severe lack of medical supplies amid the Israeli restrictions. Israel has targeted multiple healthcare facilities, including al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, throughout its assault.
Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital at least four times, arresting, killing, and besieging medical staff, patients, and displaced families sheltering there.
UNRWA said last month only 12 hospitals were still partially functioning in Gaza and that there were more than 300,000 reported cases of acute respiratory infections and more than 200,000 reported cases of watery diarrhoea.
Satellite pictures checked by the UN Satellite Centre reveal that 35% of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged due to the Israeli attacks.
