WHO: Mass Displacement Increases Communicable Disease Dangers in Gaza

The World Health Organization (WHO) affiliated with the United Nations warned that mass displacement in Gaza is having a grave impact on public health, with overcrowding, a lack of proper shelter, poor water, sanitation, and hygiene conditions increasing the dangers of communicable diseases. WHO says overcrowding is also raising the risk of mass casualties in attacks on heavily populated areas. The UN agency warns that the number of patients in need of medical evacuation outside Gaza is expected to increase, given the ongoing fighting and the shrinking capacity of the health system. WHO continues to call for the establishment of multiple medical evacuation corridors out of Gaza to ensure the safe and timely passage of patients via all possible routes. For ten months, the Israeli occupation has been waging a comprehensive war of extermination on the Gaza Strip, leaving tens of thousands martyred, wounded, and missing, most of them children and women, in addition to the displacement of about two million peo ple, amidst massive destruction of the health and educational infrastructure and the cessation of food, water, medicine, and fuel supplies, which resulted in a famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children. (QNA) Source: Qatar News Agency