Life in Gaza: hunger, disease and one liter of water per person per day, says MSF

Bombings, extreme hunger, disease, only one liter of water per person per day, violence, overcrowding, despair and fear, this is life in the Gaza stripand in the north worse than in the south, according to the Logistics coordinator of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Afonso Artacho.

Yazan al-Kafarneh, a ten-year-old Palestinian boy displaced from Beit Hanun and suffering from a pre-existing illness, lies in a hospital bed at the Al-Awda clinic in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP photo) (-/)

I just got back to Spain from there, where it is responsible for infrastructure tasks such as water supply or equipment security.

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This technical architect living in the Spanish city of Malaga He reported this Wednesday that the level of suffering he has seen in Gaza population He had not noticed this before in the 18 years he had trotted around the world from emergency to emergency.

“Nobody sleeps a night in a row”because the bombings are continuous, he explained before adding that“In the north people are dying, there is a severe famine”.

And in the south there is no serious malnutrition and the population can survive because little humanitarian aid remains in Rafa being looted after crossing the border with Egypt.

Displaced Palestinian women carrying their belongings raise a makeshift white flag as they pass Israeli forces as they flee the city of Hamad in the Khan Yunis area of ​​the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP photo) (-/)

MSF detected in Gaza strip a multitude of infectious, skin and respiratory diseases, as well as diarrhea, as a result of the lack of medical supplies and health care and facilities following the bombing, explained another member of the MSF, Carlos Bustamante.

O World Health Organization (WHO) sets a target of 20 liters of water per person per day in emergency situations, and in Gaza one liter is not achieved due to lack of distribution capacity due to partial destruction of infrastructure.

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Assaults out of desperation

Added to this is the limitation derived from the absence of trucks and fuel for its operation, therefore the supply must be “bottle by bottle“, and vehicles are attacked due to the desperation of the population, he indicated Artacho.

Since the Israeli offensive began, more than 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were forced to move to the south of the strip, in Rafawhere 300,000 lived.

A Palestinian woman wears a locally made diaper in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on February 20, 2024, amid a severe shortage of essential items since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP) (MOHAMMED ABED/)

This gives an idea of ​​the overcrowding and subhuman living conditions: they live under “pieces of plastic and four pieces of wood, there is no floor” And besides, it’s been really cold.

Scarcity of everything, medicines arrive little by little, there is violence in the streets and “fear is felt in everyone” due to daily bombings.

Rafaclose to the border with EgyptIt is the only point of entry for goods: before around 500 or 600 trucks arrived per day and now on the best day there are a hundred and, as soon as they cross the border, they are attacked “and in a minute there is nothing left.”

Source: Elcomercio