Michael Ryan, CEO of the World Health Organization for Emergency Programs, warned, on Thursday, of the deteriorating health status of children in the Gaza Strip, two months after Israel prevented the entry of aid, and launched a large -scale bombing.
Since March 2, Israel has prevented the entry of medical supplies, fuel and food items to Gaza.
Ryan told reporters at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva.
We are complicit, “calling on the international community to move. He added:” As a doctor, I am angry. This is not likely. “
Ryan pointed out that “the current level of malnutrition causes the collapse of immunity,” noting that cases of pneumonia and meningitis in women and children increased.
The United Nations warned this week against exacerbating acute malnutrition among the children of Gaza.
The director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanum Jibrissus, said on Thursday that the situation in Gaza is “catastrophic”, while two million people are suffering from “hunger”, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees “UNRWA”, and the World Food Program, explained that food stocks have been running out, even with the accumulation of life -saving aid supplies on border crossings pending their entry into the sector.
Hunger has spread widely in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza in October 2023, but during the past two months, Israel imposed strict restrictions on the introduction of food and aid to the Strip, which prompted the “integrated classification of the stages of food security” IPC, a leading initiative in monitoring food crises globally, to warn of a “hunger crisis”.
The population of Gaza is more than two million people, most of them depend on aid, but no humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered since last March 2, when Israel imposed a comprehensive siege on the Strip.
This is the longest siege on the entry of aid to the Strip since the start of the war in October 2023, and this situation has led to a lack of food, not only in food, but in other substances, including medicines, shelter supply and clean water.
