WHO rescues 32 critical patients out of Gaza amid hostilities

The World Health Organization has led two life-saving missions to transfer 32 critical patients, including two children, from Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza on 18 and 19 February, 2024 amid ongoing hostilities and access restrictions. 

This was disclosed at the Press Briefing by the United Nations Spokesperson on Tuesday adding that the high-risk missions were conducted in close partnership with the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Revealing that the team also provided limited supplies of essential medicines and food for the remaining patients and staff who are otherwise being cut off from aid.

He said, “Four Palestine Red Crescent ambulances ensured the safe transportation of the patients, who underwent medical assessment and triage under coordination of the hospital director.

“Nasser Hospital has no electricity or running water, and medical waste and garbage are creating a breeding ground for diseases.  WHO staff said the destruction around the hospital was “indescribable”.  

“The area was surrounded by burnt and destroyed buildings and heavy layers of debris, with no stretch of intact road. An estimated 130 sick and injured patients and at least 15 doctors and nurses remain inside the hospital”. 

He added that WHO fears for the safety and well-being of the patients and health workers who are remaining in the hospital and the agency also warns that further disruption to life-saving care for the sick and injured would lead to more deaths.

Giving more update on the situation in Gaza, the Spokesman said in a statement issued today, the World Food Programme said it is pausing its deliveries of food aid to northern Gaza Strip until conditions are in place that allow for safe distributions of that aid.

“The decision to pause deliveries to the north has not been taken lightly, as we know it means the situation there will deteriorate further and more people risk dying of hunger. 

“The World Food Programme is deeply committed, they tell us, to urgently reaching desperate people across Gaza but the safety and security to deliver critical food aid — and for the people receiving it — must be ensured”.

He pressed further that the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jamie McGoldrick, wrapped up a visit to Gaza, the Kerem Shalom crossing, the Rafah crossings to see first-hand challenges there to getting more humanitarian aid into the Gaza strip. 

“Yesterday, the WHO along with the UNICEF and the World Food Programme, issued results of a new analysis that shows a steep rise in malnutrition among children and pregnant and breastfeeding women in the Gaza Strip. 

“The report entitled “Nutrition Vulnerability and Situation Analysis — in Gaza”, finds that the situation is particularly extreme in the northern Gaza Strip, which has been almost completely cut off from aid for weeks. 

“Nutrition screenings conducted at shelters and health centres in the north found that 15.6 per cent — or one in six children under the age of 2 — are acutely malnourished. Of these, almost 3 per cent suffer from severe wasting, which is the most severe form of malnutrition”, he narrated.

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