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The NGO emphasizes that the population is “on the verge of starvation” and adds that “the threat of disease outbreaks looms over Rafá”
MADRID, April 29 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) denounced this Monday the “silent deaths” registered in the Gaza Strip due to preventable diseases and lack of access of the population to health care due to the military offensive launched by Israel against the enclave after the attacks carried out on October 7 by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
The NGO has emphasized in its report ‘Silent deaths in Gaza: the destruction of the health system and the fight for survival in Rafá’ that the health system has been devastated by the offensive and has warned that the civilian population is increasingly running risk of acute malnutrition and further deterioration of their physical and mental health.
“How many children have already died of pneumonia in overflowing hospitals?” asked Mari Carmen Viñoles, head of the MSF Emergency Unit. “How many babies have died from preventable diseases? How many diabetic patients have been left without treatment? And the deadly consequences of the closure of kidney dialysis units in the attacked hospitals?” she questioned.
“These are the silent deaths in Gaza that are not reported in all this chaos, caused by the collapse of the health system throughout Gaza,” he stressed, amid the deterioration of the situation in the city of Rafah, where they now reside. nearly 1.7 million people, most of them displaced from other points in the enclave, due to the threat of an Israeli offensive against the city.
Thus, MSF has maintained that its teams in Rafá report that what remains operational of the health system and the poor living conditions increase the risk of epidemic outbreaks, to which are added malnutrition and the impact of the psychological trauma suffered by the population after more than six months of attacks by the Israeli Army.
The organization has also warned that an Israeli offensive against Rafah would mean “an unfathomable catastrophe” and has reiterated its call for a ceasefire, in the midst of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas for an end to the fighting in exchange for release of the hostages kidnapped on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist group.
In this way, he stressed that living conditions in the city “are not conducive to survival” and added that there is a great shortage of drinking water, while garbage and untreated wastewater accumulate in the streets. of the city, where the few medical centers that remain operational are overwhelmed.
A DESTROYED AND SATURATED HEALTH SYSTEM
Thus, in the two primary care centers managed by MSF in Al Shabura and Al Mauasi, an average of 5,000 medical consultations are attended to per week, with more than 40 percent of them focused on patients with respiratory tract infections. higher and in the face of a growing number of suspected cases of hepatitis A.
Added to this is that during the last quarter of 2023, the cases of diarrheal diseases registered in children under five years of age were 25 times higher than those of the same period in 2022, while in the first quarter of 2024, 216 children under the age of five were treated. 5 years for moderate or severe acute malnutrition, almost non-existent before the current conflict.
For their part, people with other types of needs, such as pregnant women with complications and people with chronic illnesses, often cannot receive the necessary care. At the Emirati Hospital, medical teams attend to nearly a hundred births a day, five times more than before the conflict, while consultations for hypertension, diabetes, asthma, epilepsy and cancer at MSF clinics have increased as patients seek monitoring and medication.
In addition, the mental health of the population “is on the rocks” and the majority of patients present symptoms related to anxiety and stress, including psychosomatic and depressive symptoms. MSF has indicated that some people caring for family members with serious mental disorders have resorted to excessive sedation to keep them safe.
“As an international emergency medical organization, we have the experience and the means to do much more and expand our response,” stressed MSF Emergency Coordinator Sylvain Groulx. “Palestinian medical personnel are highly qualified and only need to be given the means to work in acceptable and dignified conditions to treat and save lives,” he added.
However, he stressed that “today all this remains absurdly impossible” due to the continuation of the fighting, now centered in the central area of the Strip, and the Israeli bombings, which continue throughout the enclave. “Without an immediate and lasting ceasefire and the influx of significant humanitarian aid, we will continue to see more people die,” Groulx concluded.
A POPULATION “ON THE VERGE OF STARVATION”
For this reason, RSF has insisted that the restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of supplies to Gaza “have brought the population to the brink of starvation” and has confirmed “an alarming upward trend in the number of children, pregnant women and recent mothers affected with acute malnutrition”.
“MSF’s primary care centers in Rafah only give an idea of one part of a much wider crisis, as conditions in northern Gaza, to which MSF teams do not have access, are reportedly much more terrible,” he highlighted, in the face of “six months of devastating conflict, with a death toll that exceeds that of any other war of the 21st century.”
“Even those who have fled to supposedly safe areas are still not safe,” argued MSF, which has insisted that “the threat of disease outbreaks looms over Rafah” and has stressed that people who fled the offensive towards the city They are now at risk of dying from disease, hunger and dehydration in the city.
For this reason, he has announced that the recovery of Gaza’s health system will require “years, if not decades” and has pointed out that “Rafah is today the last bastion in which there is any glimmer of medical care, and it must be protected.”
Along these lines, he has demanded an “immediate and lasting” ceasefire so that humanitarian organizations can “massively” expand their activities and begin to rebuild the health system. To this must be added a permit for the “rapid and unhindered entry” of aid at a “sufficient” level to address the situation.
