Palestinian children on the run suffer from lice, scabies and rashes

A steady stream of crying children and worried parents pour into the skin clinic at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

A little girl with a blue bow in her hair sobs as her mother shows a dermatologist how the red and white spots covering her face have spread to her neck and chest.

Another mother lifts her little boy’s clothes to reveal rashes on his back, bottom, thighs and stomach. On his wrists are open sores from desperately scratching at the rashes.

A father lifts his daughter onto a table so the doctor can examine the wounds on her calves.

Thousands affected

Palestinian health authorities warn that skin diseases abound in Gaza. The reason, they say, is the appalling conditions in the overcrowded tent camps that house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been forced to flee their own homes.

At the same time, the summer sun is scorching, and Gaza’s sanitary facilities are completely out of order as a result of the war. In several places, sewage flows openly in the streets.

Doctors are desperately trying to treat over 103,000 cases of lice and scabies and 65,000 cases of skin rashes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Among Gaza’s population of around 2.3 million, over 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections have been registered since the war between Israel and Hamas began on 7 October last year. In addition, over half a million cases of acute diarrhea and over 100,000 cases of jaundice have been registered, according to the UN development programme.

Sand, insects and rubbish

Cleanliness is impossible in the dilapidated tents that are scattered close together over long stretches of Palestinian territory. The tents are basically only made of blankets and plastic bags that are hung over worn wooden frames.

– There is no shampoo, no soap, says Munira al-Nahhal, who lives in a tent on the dunes outside Khan Younis.

– The water is dirty. Everything around us is sand, insects and rubbish, she says.

In the family’s tent, the generations live together. Several of her grandchildren have ugly rashes on their bodies. A small boy stands and scratches the red spots on his stomach.

– One child gets a rash, and then it spreads to all of them, says al-Nahhal.

The Palestinians who live in the tent camp say that it is almost impossible to get hold of clean water. Some wash their children in salt water from the Mediterranean. But with the war, the sea has become heavily polluted.

In addition, people have to wear the same clothes day after day until they finally manage to get them washed and immediately have to wear them again. There are flies everywhere. The children play on rubbish-strewn beaches.

– First there were spots on her face. Then it spread to his stomach and arms and all over his forehead. And it hurts. It itches. And there is no treatment. And if there is treatment, we can’t afford it, says Shaima Marshoud with her daughter by her side.

Struggling to deliver emergency aid

In ten months, more than 1.8 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been displaced from their own homes. Several of them have had to flee repeatedly to escape the Israeli attacks.

The vast majority of them now live in an overcrowded area of ​​around 50 square kilometers along Gaza’s coast, surrounded by sand dunes and fields, where there is little water and almost no functioning sewage systems.

Officials at the UN confirm that the population is receiving very little humanitarian aid, including soap, shampoo and medicine, as a result of the Israeli warfare and a general lawlessness in Gaza, which makes it too dangerous for aid workers to move in the area.

The Israeli government has said it will continue to attack the Palestinian territory until it has destroyed Hamas, which was behind the attack on Israel on October 7 last year that killed around 1,200 Israelis and led to the abduction of 250. After ten months, over 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli warfare in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

– Critical

– The system for handling waste has collapsed, says Chitose Noguchi, deputy head of the UN’s development program in the Palestinian territories.

A new UN report states that it is impossible to reach the two landfills in the Gaza Strip that were in use before the war.

The UN has arranged for ten new sites for garbage disposal, but according to Noguchi, more than 140 unofficial garbage sites have emerged. Some of them have become giant mountains of rubbish, containing both waste and human remains.

– People live in tents close to the rubbish dumps, which is very critical in view of the health crisis unfolding in Gaza, says Noguchi.

Serious cases

Dermatologist Nassim Basala says 300 to 500 people with skin diseases come to Nasser Hospital every day. Following Israel’s latest evacuation order, even more people have crowded into the fields outside Khan Younis, where insects abound in the summer.

Scabies and lice are spreading in epidemic proportions, he says, but other fungal, bacterial and viral infections, as well as parasites, are also running rampant among the population.

The fact that there are so many people who need health care at the same time is in itself a risk, according to Basala.

For example, chicken pox, a bacterial infection that is easily treated with creams, can become serious if left untreated. In some cases, patients have only come to the doctor when the boils have spread and affected the kidneys. This has led to cases of kidney failure, according to Basala. In addition, when people scratch the rashes and open sores form, they can become infected again as a result of the poor hygienic conditions.

Basala says they are struggling to get hold of enough creams and ointments at the hospital, where the stocks are about to be emptied.

Inconsolable children

Children are most affected by the skin diseases, but adults are also affected.

A man who has come to the hospital’s skin clinic takes off his dirty shoes to show the painful sores that have spread from his feet up to his ankles. A woman holds up her hands, which are red and cracked.

Mohammed al-Rayan, who lives in a tent outside Khan Younis, says several of his children have rashes and red dots on their bodies and that he has taken them to the doctor.

– They give us creams, but it doesn’t help when we don’t get to wash them. You apply the cream, it gets better, but the next day it comes back, he says.

Parents struggle to comfort children suffering from painful illnesses that won’t go away.

Manar al-Hessi’s poor girl, Sham, cries as she has cream applied to her forehead and chest, which is covered in scabs, sores and rashes.

– It is horrible, says al-Hessi.

– There are always flies on her face. She goes to the toilet and among the garbage, and the bacteria ends up on her hands. It is so extremely dirty.