Name: How crowded shelters are making Gazas children sick
Uploaded: 2023-12-14T15:52:43.807Z
Duration: 3 min 40 s
Description: A doctor at one of the main hospitals in Khan Younis in southern Gaza is warning that the overcrowding at shelters for the displaced, deteriorating sanitary conditions and shortages of food, clean water and medicine are making children ill and risk spreading more disease among the young.

A doctor at one of the main hospitals in Khan Younis in southern Gaza is warning that the overcrowding at shelters for the displaced, deteriorating sanitary conditions and shortages of food, clean water and medicine are making children ill and risk spreading more disease among the young.

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Middle East Conflict

How crowded shelters are making Gaza's children sick

Conditions at overcrowded shelters in Gaza are making children ill, according to Ahmed al-Farah and other doctors in the enclave's overwhelmed hospitals. The paediatric ward al-Farah works on at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, has seen a sharp rise in young patients. Many have infections such as acute gastroenteritis, which he describes as an epidemic. The number of cases has increased to four times its normal levels. Most of the water being consumed by children is unfit for human consumption. Most of the food is canned. People have lost access to fresh food. There's no fruit, no vegetables. Children have had a deficiency in vitamins, immune deficiency, in addition to iron deficiencies and aminia from the lack of nutrition. ISIS-A is also appearing at the shelters, he says. This is a very dangerous indicator that should be paid attention to, from overcrowding and consuming food not fit for human consumption and using shared toilets. The UN humanitarian office warned on Wednesday that Gaza faces a public health disaster due to the collapse of its health system and the spread of disease, as Israel wages an offensive that has hit hospitals and displaced most of Gaza's 2.3 million people. Children are admitted with extreme dehydration to the point of kidney failure, doctors say. They are seeing an increase in breathing problems as families resort to burning wood and garbage to cook. There's also a severe lack of medicines in Gaza, which Israel has blockaded, to treat the children. Mahmoud Abu Shaikh has taken shelter in this makeshift tent with his three children, who are all under three years old. Conditions at this camp for the displaced in Khan Younis are making them ill, he says, and there's little treatment available. The eldest caught gastroenteritis, then the second, then the third. Day after day I go to the hospital seeking treatment, but they haven't got the treatment the children need. They gave us some medicine to drink, but it's not enough to cure them. The World Health Organization has also reported a sharp rise in acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea, lice, scabies and other fast-spreading conditions. Juliet Touma of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, says the schools were not built to house people. Most of the shelters are not equipped with the toilets or the showers or the clean water that people need in these shelters, simply because the numbers of people that came to these shelters is just overwhelming, and also because many of these shelters that we've opened to receive people who were forced to flee their homes were not meant to be shelters. Gaza's health authorities say about 18,000 people have been confirmed killed and 49,500 injured in Israeli strikes, with thousands more missing and presumed dead under the rubble. Deaths from north Gaza aren't being counted currently because they occur beyond the reach of ambulances and functioning hospitals. Israel launched its war on Gaza to destroy Hamas after the Palestinian militant group sent its fighters on a rampage in Israel that killed 1,200 people.

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