2023-11-10 21:45:00
The health system in the Gaza Strip is ‘on its knees’, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Friday before the UN Security Council. He indicated that half of the enclave’s 36 hospitals were no longer functioning ‘at all’.
‘The situation on the ground is impossible to describe: hospital corridors piled up with wounded, sick and dying people, overflowing morgues, surgeries without anesthesia, tens of thousands of people taking refuge in hospitals,’ said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, counting ‘more than 250 attacks’ on health establishments in Gaza and the West Bank since the start of the war triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7. And 25 once morest establishments in Israel.
‘The best way to support these health workers and the people they care for is to give them the means they need for care: medicines, medical equipment and fuel for hospital generators,’ she said. he added, calling for an increase in humanitarian aid arriving through the Rafah crossing and repeating repeated calls from UN officials for a ‘ceasefire’.
“I understand what the children of Gaza are going through, because I experienced the same thing when I was a child,” noted the WHO director-general, originally from Tigray in Ethiopia.
‘The sound of shots and shells whistling in the air, the smell of smoke following they hit, the tracer bullets in the night, the fear, the suffering,’ he described, denouncing On the other hand, the ‘barbaric’ attacks of October 7 demanding the release of Hamas hostages.
‘The Council no longer fulfills its role’
While the Security Council, deeply divided on this issue, has been unable since the start of the war to speak with one voice, the head of the WHO has also called for reform of the UN body. ‘I have long believed that the Security Council no longer fulfills the role for which it was created’, the maintenance of global ‘peace and security’, he insisted.
The director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Marwan Jilani, speaking by video, called on Council members to ‘do everything they can to prevent further deaths and further suffering’. He particularly denounced the situation at Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, which according to the Red Crescent was fired on Friday by elite Israeli soldiers.
‘I was preparing to brief the Council on the critical shortage of fuel, food and water, but honestly our main concern now is the direct threat to the lives of the wounded and sick, and tens of thousands of civilians’ sheltering in the hospital, he said. ‘They implore you to act to prevent another potential massacre.’
At the start of its meeting, the Security Council observed a minute of silence in tribute to the victims of Hamas attacks once morest Israel (1,200 dead according to the revised toll of the Israeli authorities), to the civilians killed in the bombings of Gaza (more than 11′ 000 dead according to the Hamas Ministry of Health), as well as to journalists and UN personnel who have lost their lives since the start of this war.
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