Gaza faces ‘perfect storm’ of deadly diseases

For the besieged residents of Gaza who have so far survived Israel’s bombs and bullets, a silent, invisible killer is now stalking them: disease. A lack of food, clean water and shelter have worn down hundreds of thousands of traumatised people and, with a health system on its knees, it’s inevitable epidemics will rip through the enclave, 10 doctors and aid workers told Reuters. “The perfect storm for disease has begun. Now it’s about, ‘How bad will it get?'” James Elder, chief spokesperson for the U.N. children’s fund (UNICEF), said in an interview on Tuesday. From Nov. 29 to Dec. 10, cases of diarrhoea in children under five jumped 66% to 59,895 cases, and climbed 55% for the rest of the population in the same period, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO). The U.N. agency said the numbers were inevitably incomplete due to the meltdown of all systems and services in Gaza because of the war. The head of the paediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, told Reuters on Tuesday his ward was overrun with children suffering extreme dehydration, causing kidney failure in some cases, while severe diarrhoea was four times higher than normal. He said he was aware of 15 to 30 cases of Hepatitis A in Khan Younis in the past two weeks: “The incubation period of the virus is three weeks to a month, so after a month there will be an explosion in the number of cases of Hepatitis A.” Since the truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed on Dec. 1, hundreds of thousands of people have moved to makeshift shelters – abandoned buildings, schools and tents. Many others are sleeping in the open with little access to toilets or water to bathe, aid workers said. At the same time, 21 of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals are closed, 11 are partially functional and four are minimally functional, according to WHO figures from Dec. 10. Marie-Aure Perreaut, emergency medical coordinator for MSF’s operations in Gaza, sai