The battle between Israel and Hamas is wreaking havoc on Gaza’s health, according to the World Health Organization’s director-general on Sunday. The UN health agency convened a special session of the WHO executive board to review the health situation in the Palestinian territories, with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus describing a crumbling system in which medics have a “impossible” job. “The impact of the conflict on health is catastrophic,” Tedros said during the meeting’s opening remarks in Geneva.”As more and more people move to a smaller and smaller area, overcrowding, combined with the lack of adequate food, water, shelter and sanitation, are creating the ideal conditions for disease to spread,” he went on to say.
Tedros stated that there were troubling symptoms of epidemic infections, and that the risk was projected to rise as the situation deteriorated and winter conditions approached. “Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” Tedros added, with only 14 of 36 facilities operating at all, and only two of those in the north of the coastal region.Only 1,400 of the original 3,500 hospital beds are still accessible, while the two major hospitals in southern Gaza are functioning at three times their bed capacity, running out of supplies and sheltering thousands of displaced people, according to Tedros.
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