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Palestinians in Gaza risk dying from ‘completely preventable’ hepatitis A
Hepatitis A is spreading in Gaza in numbers unheard of in developed nations, leading to complete liver failure in some patients, said Jeremy Hickey, a physician with the medical nonprofit Fajr Scientific.
“This is a completely preventable illness and something that we rarely see in developed nations,” said Hickey, who recently volunteered for a medical mission in Gaza.
Even when hepatitis A does emerge in developed nations, said Hickey, it is easily treatable and causes little long-term damage to those who recover. However, due to the lack of resources in Gaza, he said the disease there often progresses to its worst stage – fulminant hepatitis. That means acute liver failure, leading to “seizures, comas and eventually death”.
Usually, once patients reach this stage, they will eventually “succumb to the disease because there is no method or means to support them”, he said.
‘I was tortured 13 times a day’
A Palestinian man who was imprisoned for 52 days in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman detention camp, which has been plagued by allegations of abuse, spoke to Al Jazeera about his time in the facility.
“I was tortured 13 times a day during those 32 days,” said the former prisoner, Ibrahim Atef Salem. “There was no mercy, no compassion at all.”
Torture methods included the use of an “electric chair” and frequent beatings, he said, adding that intelligence services interrogated him “constantly”.
Unsanitary prison conditions also led to the spread of scabies and lice, he said, with some prisoners suffering so badly that they could not even sit down.
