Director of Gaza’s Health Ministry calls on UN to issue famine declaration
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the UN should make an official declaration of famine in the Strip as an Israeli blockade choking off access to food and other vital goods enters its third month.
“We call on the United Nations to issue an official declaration of famine in Gaza, given that field indicators and medical and humanitarian data confirm that international conditions for this have been met,” he said.
Here are some points he shared with Al Jazeera Arabic about the dire conditions faced by Palestinians in Gaza.
- 91 percent of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are facing a food crisis two months after Israel closed the crossings.
- 92 percent of children and breastfeeding mothers in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition.
- 65 percent of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip do not have access to clean drinking water.
‘We are starving Gaza’s children’, laments top WHO official
WHO’s executive director, Michael Ryan, has implored the international community to act as Gaza’s children suffer under a crippling two-month blockade.
“We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza. We are complicit,” Ryan told reporters at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva. “As a physician, I am angry. It is an abomination.”
A Palestinian reacts as people gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, April 29
‘It’s not easy to witness people’s suffering,’ says aid worker
Yousra Abu Sharekh, Gaza programme coordinator at aid group INARA, told Al Jazeera that more and more babies and children are coming into its health clinic in Gaza malnourished and lacking essential supplies.
“It’s not easy to witness what people suffer. They lack everything,” said Abu Sharekh, talking about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the enclave. “They need diapers, baby formula, milk, everything.
“This adds more stress and more psychological strain on the parents. How can they secure the needs of their children?”
Abu Sharekh noted that INARA is running out of staples due to the blockade.
“Tomorrow will be the last day of distributing rice,” she said, adding that Palestinians already failing to access protein will now face even greater deprivation.
