Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 6th March. UN humanitarians on Tuesday issued a fresh alert about “appalling” conditions in medical facilities in north Gaza where children are battling life-threatening malnutrition, a rare opportunity to deliver needed aid supplies to hospitals in northern Gaza for the first time in months.
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory said that “WHO and partners managed to access (Al) Shifa (hospital) in the north and deliver fuel, some lifesaving supplies for 150 patients and treatment of 50 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition and also bring it vaccines.”
WHO mission also reached Kamal Adwan hospital further north first time since October 7.
Dr. Peeperkorn said the facility’s paediatric unit was where 10 children died from hunger and dehydration in recent days and it was “overwhelmed with patients”.
WHO medic stressed that the situation in Al Awda Hospital was particularly appalling and appealed for urgent sustained humanitarian access.
“The deconfliction mechanism needs to continue working so aid can reach those in need,” the WHO medic insisted, referenced the protocol whereby combatants are pre-notified of aid locations.
According to Dr. Peeperkorn, most of the WHO Missions to the north were denied in January; only 3 out of 16 were approved, four were “impeded” and nine were “denied”. “Zero (missions) were facilitated in February,” he told journalists in Geneva.
The needs are most dire in northern Gaza, WHO stated many more people all over the Strip rely on humanitarian assistance after nearly five months of conflict that have displaced around 1.5 million people to the southern governorate of Rafah.
Dr. Peeperkorn stressed that malnutrition leads to irreparable wasting in young children was never the deadly threat in Gaza that it is now, as the enclave was largely self-sufficient in fish and other food production.
“Before the recent months’ hostilities, wasting in the Gaza Strip was rare with just 0.8 per cent of children under five years of age acutely malnourished,” he explained.
“The (current) rate of 15.6 percent of wasting among children under two in northern Gaza suggests a serious and rapid decline. Such a decline in a population’s nutritional status in three months is unprecedented globally.”
He noted with concern that 90 per cent of children under two years old and 95 per cent of pregnant and breastfeeding women “face severe food poverty meaning they have consumed two or less food groups in the previous day and the food they do have access to is of the lowest nutritional value”.
OCHA said that humanitarian airdrops have been carried out in Gaza in response to the slow trickle of humanitarian aid reaching the enclave overland.
UN has not participated in such missions but these have not been ruled out, said aid coordination office, OCHA, indicated that it would continue to “explore every avenue to ensure that aid reaches those in need”.
OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke said “Our clear focus is to have overland transport scaled up so that it is commensurate with the enormous needs that we hear about,”
“When children are starting as the doctors are telling our colleagues to die from starvation that should be a warning like no other; if not now, when is the time to pull the stops, break the glass, flood Gaza with the aid that it needs.”
Mr. Laerke explained before the war in Gaza, 500 trucks a day entered Gaza, but the daily tally in recent months and days has barely risen above 133.
“We continue to engage with the authorities and everyone involved who can help us get those openings so that we can get aid in at scale. But currently we do not have (permissions to enter).”
UN Human Rights Council in Geneva heard that up to 80 per cent of housing in parts of northern Gaza has been damaged or destroyed since Israeli bombardment began in response to Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October in Israel.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing said that “All that makes housing ‘adequate’ access to services, jobs or culture – schools, religious places, universities, hospitals – have all been leveled,”
“This scale and intensity of destruction is far worse than in Aleppo, Mariupol or even Dresden and Rotterdam during World War II.”
UN experts condemned the killing of at least 112 people gathered to collect flour southwest of Gaza City last week.
The so-called “flour massacre” involved Israeli forces left 760 injured prompted widespread international condemnation and an investigation call by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
“Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October…Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians,” the rights experts said.
A statement by the experts who included Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, added that the attack came “after Israel has denied humanitarian aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza for more than a month”.
International Court of Justice ruling on 26 January urged Israel to allow the delivery of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, only 57 trucks entered Gaza between 9 and 21 February, they said.
The experts added “Israel systematically denies and restricts the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza by intercepting deliveries at checkpoints, bombing humanitarian convoys and shooting at civilians seeking humanitarian assistance.”
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