<\/p>\n
28 June 2024<\/p>\n
(excerpt)<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Humanitarian Update from Central Gaza<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Louise Wateridge, Senior Communications Officer at the\u00a0United Nations Relief and Works Agency<\/u>\u00a0(UNRWA), joined the briefing online from central Gaza and said that she had just returned to the Gaza Strip after four weeks. Ms. Wateridge\u00a0stated that in that\u00a0period, conditions had deteriorated significantly, with very limited\u00a0access to\u00a0fuel on the ground, restricted movement, and few – if any – waste management\u00a0services\u00a0in operation. The living conditions were extremely dire, the weather was extremely hot, with very few resources and limited water. UNRWA was desperately seeking support and looking for help to assist Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n Answering questions, Ms. Wateridge\u00a0stated that people\u00a0in Gaza\u00a0were hungry and malnourished\u00a0after\u00a0enduring 8 months of\u00a0food insecurity.\u00a0The physical appearance of many colleagues and local people whom Ms. Wateridge\u00a0knew personally had changed due to a lack of access to sustained, healthy food, fresh fruit\u00a0and vegetables, she said.<\/p>\n On a question about the\u00a0US-backed\u00a0pier, Ms.Wateridge\u00a0affirmed\u00a0that UNRWA had always\u00a0welcomed any\u00a0aid that entered the Gaza Strip but underscored that\u00a0UNRWA\u2019s position was for the entry\u00a0of humanitarian\u00a0aid trucks through\u00a0border crossings, stating that this was both safer and\u00a0more cost-efficient than any air drops or using the pier.<\/p>\n Daniel Johnson,\u00a0for the\u00a0United Nations Information Service<\/u>\u00a0(UNIS)\u00a0in Geneva,\u00a0reminded reporters of the statement by the spokesperson for\u00a0United Nations Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, on Thursday: that in spite of\u00a0UN efforts to get fuel into Gaza there was still not enough reaching UN agencies inside the Strip.<\/p>\n In response to a question on health risks for associated with heat, Tarik Ja\u0161arevi\u0107\u00a0for the\u00a0World Health Organization<\/u>\u00a0(WHO),\u00a0stated that summer weather could\u00a0lead to number of communicable diseases appearing\u00a0in Gaza for several reasons, including\u00a0water contamination, food spoilage, mosquitos and flies, dehydration\u00a0and heatstroke.<\/p>\n WHO had recorded a number of\u00a0470,000 cases of diarrhea\u00a0since the beginning of the conflict, with a majority due to lack of clean water. Mr. Ja\u0161arevi\u0107 emphasized that, for children under\u00a0the age of\u00a05, this combination of lack of food and water, coupled with diarrhea,\u00a0could be a lethal combination.<\/p>\n Speaking to questions about amputations, Mr. Ja\u0161arevi\u0107\u00a0stated that while estimates were not available, an entire system would need to be in place for health workers to be able to save a limb, and adequate conditions were currently unavailable in Gaza with the ongoing hostilities.\u00a0Consequently, if someone currently suffered an\u00a0injury,\u00a0they would not only risk losing\u00a0their limbs\u00a0and\u00a0their capacity to live normally, but quite possibly their lives.<\/p>\n Answering\u00a0a question on evacuations,\u00a0Louise Wateridge\u00a0of the\u00a0United Nations Relief and Works Agency<\/u>\u00a0(UNRWA)\u00a0stated that the situation was as dire as it had ever been and\u00a0was getting worse every day. She called for the immediate resumption of medical evacuations. In response to the same question, Tarik Ja\u0161arevi\u0107\u00a0for the\u00a0World Health Organization<\/u>\u00a0(WHO), welcomed the previous day\u2019s evacuation of 21 patients from Gaza. Mr. Ja\u0161arevi\u0107\u00a0noted\u00a0that this was the first evacuation since the Rafah crossing\u2019s closure on 7 May,\u00a0after which it had become difficult logistically to receive approvals and evacuate people,which meant that an estimated 2000 people had not received critical life-saving specialized health care. He echoed\u00a0Ms. Wateridge\u2019s\u00a0call, emphasizing that medical evacuations must be facilitated through all possible crossings.<\/p>\n On a question regarding looting,\u00a0Ms. Wateridge confirmed that it\u00a0had been\u00a0on the rise\u00a0and pointed\u00a0to factors\u00a0such as the lack of food\u00a0and\u00a0supplies\u00a0after 8 months of war. She also underlined that money was not being printed or distributed, and\u00a0most\u00a0salaries had\u00a0stopped being distributed. People had nowhere to obtain money, and\u00a0with limited access to humanitarian aid supplies, they were desperate.\u00a0She emphasized that\u00a0because of the siege on the Gaza Strip, it had become a very dangerous and lawless situation on the ground, and the\u00a0only answer was to provide more aid, more food, more medicine, to the people of Gaza.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 28 June 2024 Watch full Press Briefing here (excerpt) … Humanitarian Update from Central Gaza Louise Wateridge, Senior Communications Officer at the\u00a0United Nations Relief and Works Agency\u00a0(UNRWA), joined the briefing online from central Gaza and said that she had just returned to the Gaza Strip after four weeks. Ms. Wateridge\u00a0stated that in that\u00a0period, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[2565,2805],"document-source":[2633,2009],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2517,1769,2005,1741,1745],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-297794","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-briefing","document-category-video","document-source-united-nations-information-service-at-geneva","document-source-united-nations-office-at-geneva-unog","document-subject-access-and-movement","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/297794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/297794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297937,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/297794\/revisions\/297937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=297794"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=297794"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=297794"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=297794"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=297794"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=297794"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=297794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}