Gaza hospitals ‘completely overwhelmed’: WHO

AFP | Geneva                                                       

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The World Health Organization lamented yesterday that fewer than half of its requested aid-delivery missions in Gaza have been approved by Israel, stressing the need to reach and resupply devastated hospitals across the territory.

“Hospitals are completely overwhelmed and overflowing and undersupplied,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territories. Speaking to reporters in Geneva via video-link from Rafah in southern Gaza, he described how patients were frequently undergoing unnecessary amputations of limbs that could have been saved under ordinary circumstances.

Decrying the “shrinking humanitarian space” in the Gaza Strip, he accused Israel of obstructing aid deliveries across the war-ravaged Palestinian territory. Since November, only 40% of the missions WHO had requested to deliver aid to northern Gaza had been facilitated, he said.

“Since January, that figure is much lower.” Only 45% of requested missions in southern Gaza had meanwhile been made possible, he said. “These missions have been denied, impeded or postponed,” he said, describing the situation as “absurd”.

“Even when there is no cease-fire, humanitarian corridors should exist so WHO, UN and their partners can do their job.”