• Aid delivery via Rafah slows down as 8,000 displaced individuals crowd small town
• Hospitals become breeding grounds for various skin diseases

THE distribution of food and medical supplies is faltering in Gaza due to a chronic lack of fuel, chaos at aid stores, the choking of streets with rubble from Israeli shelling and overcrowding caused by displacement of civilians. Moreover, the healthcare system has almost hit a collapse and surgeons are forced to perform surgeries in corridors now.

“We take it an hour at a time because we don’t know when we will be receiving patients. Several times we’ve had to set up surgical spaces in the corridors and even sometimes in the hospital waiting areas,” said Dr Mohammed al-Run.

He was speaking soon after bombardment damaged the Indonesian Hospital near the frontlines where Israel’s military is pushing into the tiny, crowded Palestinian enclave, and with fuel supply for its generators about to run out, according to doctors.

Aid crisis

The UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) recently delivered hundreds of tonnes of flour to 50 Gaza bakeries, resulting in a 50 per cent reduction in bread prices. However, the storming of its second-largest warehouse by hungry Gazans may further complicate its operations.

Additionally, its logistics base at the Rafah border crossing, crucial for aid distribution, faces challenges due to the presence of 8,000 displaced individuals. UNRWA’s main focus remains providing aid to 150 shelters for approximately 670,000 displaced people and supplying wheat flour to bakeries.

“We’re way beyond our capacity” to do anything more than that, UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said.

The number of displaced is four times more than UNRWA had planned for before the war as a worst case scenario, she said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said their Gaza City

warehouses had suffered “severe damage” on Monday and were out of service.

Health horrors

“The sanitation is atrocious... the living conditions are sub-human. Where do people go to the bathroom? How do you remove all waste?” Rick Brennan, the WHO regional emergencies director, told Reuters, adding that such a condition was ripe for the outbreak of diseases such as diarrhoea and respiratory and skin infections such as scabies.

Additionally, Unicef has emphasised on providing ‘quick aid’ before conditions go ‘unliveable’ in Gaza.

“The constant threat of bombardment, debris, and lack of fuel makes roads extremely dangerous and inaccessible in many parts of the Gaza Strip,” said Jonathan Crickx, communications chief for Unicef Palestine.

While Unicef is bringing in medical supplies, he said, “distribution is becoming more and more difficult”.

Officials at the Turkish Friendship Hospital said bombing had damaged a ward treating cancer patients.

“The bombardment caused great damage and put some electro-mechanical systems out of work. It also endangered the lives of patients and medical teams,” said Doctor Sobi Skaik, director of the hospital, the area’s only cancer treatment facility.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2023