WHO adopts resolution to address 'catastrophic' health situation in Gaza
Resolution seeks unimpeded passage for medical personnel and supplies
WARNING: This story contains distressing images.
The head of theWorld Health Organizationsaid on Sunday it will be all but impossible to improve the "catastrophic" health situation in Gaza, even as the board passed an emergency WHO motion by consensus to secure more medical access.
Palestinian officials have also described a disastrous health situation in Gaza, where Israel's assault has left most of the population homeless, with little electricity, food or clean water, and a medical system facing collapse.
The emergency action proposed by Afghanistan, Qatar, Yemen and Morocco is the first resolution about this war to be adopted "by consensus within the UN system"since Oct. 7, according to the WHO. It seeks unimpeded passage into Gaza for medical personnel and supplies, requires the WHO to document violence against health-care workers and patients, and seekssecure funding to rebuild hospitals.
"I must be frank with you: these tasks are almost impossible in the current circumstances," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Ghebreyesus told the 34-member board in Geneva that medical needs in Gaza havesurged and the risk of disease hasgrown, yet the health system hasbeen reduced to one-third of its pre-conflict capacity.
According to Hiba Tibi,country director of CARE International in the West Bank and Gaza, hospitals in south Gazaare already less equipped than the ones in north Gaza, and are now dealing with an influx of wounded from all over the region.
"They're already overcrowded, with many wounded people evacuating from north, very limited medical supplies, where doctors find themselves in situations where they have to pick and choose which patients they can help and which ones they cannot," Tibi told CBC News. "Our biggest fear is that there would be no ceasefire and this means more people to evacuate, more displacement, people who are unable to access food and water, and to continue to be cold."
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian politician who heads the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees with 25 teams working in Gaza, said"half of Gaza is now starving."
He said 350,000 people haveinfections, including 115,000 with severe respiratory infections, and thousands are lacking warm clothes, blankets and protection from the rain.
He said many are suffering from stomach complaints because there is little clean water and not enough fuel to use to boil it, risking outbreaks of dysentery, typhoid and cholera.
"To add insult to injury, we have 46,000 injured people who cannot be treated properly because most of the hospitals are not functioning," he said.
Ongoing bombardment
Gaza's hospitals have come under bombardment and some have been besieged or raided as part of Israel's response to Hamas's deadly Oct. 7 attacks. Those that remain open are overwhelmed by the numberof dead and wounded arriving and sometimes procedures are carried out without anesthetics.
A WHO database shows there have been 449 attacks on health-care facilities in Palestinian territories since Oct. 7, without assigning blame. Ghebreyesus said it would be hard to meet the board's requests given the security situation on the ground and said he deeply regretted that the United Nations Security Council could not agree on a ceasefire following a U.S. veto.
"Resupplying health facilities has become extremely difficult and is deeply compromised by the security situation on the ground and inadequate resupply from outside Gaza," Ghebreyesus said.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila deplored the critical shortages of medicines. "The urgency of the situation cannot be overstated," she told the WHO meeting by video link.
Despite dire circumstances, some aid continues to make its way into Gaza. According to a WHO statement, "WHO and partners delivered supplies for up to 1,500 patients and transferred patients from the Al-Ahli Hospital in the north to one in the south."
According to Tibi, CARE International has delivered water, hygiene kits, andwinter itemslike thermal blankets andmattresses to people sheltering at UN schools in Gaza.
She said humanitarian workers on the ground have had to pause their aid distribution at times due to the dangerous situation caused by ongoing bombing in south Gaza. The second impediment to delivering aidis the interception of aid trucks by desperate civilians.
"People are hungry, thirsty, tired, cold. Definitely there is a percentage of the trucks that could not make it to be distributed," Tibi said."People find themselves obliged to use whatever they have seen especially when it comes to water trucks."
The UN motion was criticized by Israel, which has said it puts disproportionate focus on Israel and does not address what it describes as Hamas's use of civilians as human shields.
"If this session serves any purpose at all, it will only encourage Hamas's actions," Israeli ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar told the meeting. Israel is not a WHO board member.
WHO emergency sessions are rare and have occurred during health crises including during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and during West Africa's Ebola epidemic in 2015. Qatar, which has mediated in the Israel-Hamas conflict, chaired the session.
"The next step after the end of the war if ceasefire is obtained, from what we are seeing and what we have been able to gather data around during the truce, we know that we will need to work in Gaza for years and years and years to come," Tibi said, referring to the amount destruction caused during the war.
With files from CBC News Network
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