Israel’s Rafah attacks taking dire health toll: WHO

Geneva, Switzerland – – AFP

Israel’s deadly military offensive in the erstwhile “safe zone” for internally displaced Palestinians sheltering in Rafah is already taking a dire health toll in southern Gaza. If it continues, “substantial” increases in deaths of the severely injured can be expected, a top WHO official has warned.

Since Israel launched its nightmarish blitzkrieg in early May, access to healthcare in Gaza’s southernmost city has been devastated, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s representative in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Speaking in an interview in Geneva, he pointed to the over one million people on the move since the assault, which has left two of Rafah’s three hospitals completely dysfunctional.

Al-Najar, Rafah’s most important hospital, which had been servicing 700 dialysis patients from all over the besieged Palestinian territory, has shut down, as has the Kuwaiti hospital.

The Emirati maternity and paediatric hospital is now “barely functional”, Peeperkorn said, pointing out that it could no longer accept new patients.

“If the incursion would continue, we would lose that last hospital in Rafah,” he warned.

That would mean that around 1.9 million people in southern Gaza will basically be fully dependent on a string of field hospitals along the coast.

– Closure and disruption of two key crossing – 

Already, WHO and other aid organisations are struggling to keep humanitarian operations running, as bringing fuel and other aid into the battered Palestinian territory has been significantly hampered by the closure and disruption by Israel of two key crossings.

“There are currently 60 WHO trucks (in Egypt) waiting to get into Gaza,” Peeperkorn said, adding that only three trucks with medical supplies had crossed in since May 7.

And even when medical and other aid makes it into Gaza, it remains “very challenging” to transport and deliver the goods both in the south and to the north, he said.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza which began on October 7, has resulted in the killings of at least 36,096 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

– ‘Very concerned’ –

The United Nations has long warned of a looming famine, especially in the north of besieged Gaza.

Since the Rafah incursion, Peeperkorn said he was becoming increasingly worried about malnutrition in the south.

He said that during a mission to the north in April he had been somewhat relieved to see signs that access to food might be improving slightly.

“There was more food on the market, it was a bit more diverse,” he said.

And while the hospitals he visited then were still full of severely malnourished children — “two-year-olds weighing only four kilos” — he said he had been hopeful that the situation might be on “a better trajectory”.

But now, with the impact of the Rafah incursion already taking a heavy toll on access to aid and healthcare, he said that “we fear that instead of (being) on the right trajectory with regard to malnutrition, we will see very quickly a reverse again”.

“We are very concerned.”

Asked if he feared more people could eventually die from otherwise non-life-threatening injuries and disease or malnutrition-linked causes, than from the fighting itself, he said: “I would really hope… that this is not going to happen”.