Disease ripping through Gaza as Israel continues to deliberately block aid: Oxfam

This aid includes shelters, food and supplements to combat malnutrition, and water equipment, sanitation items and medicines that would be vital to tackle diseases and   

Oxfam alone has over 110,000 items of humanitarian aid in one warehouse including water bladders and tanks, hygiene, dignity and water testing kits, food parcels, soap, nappies, pipes and latrine slabs. 

Oxfam is waiting for clearances and permissions to enter, however the Israeli authorities have recently denied water and sanitation items and food parcels. 

Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel policy lead, said that time is running out to prevent an epidemic across Gaza and the mass death that would inevitably result. 

“The conditions that Palestinians in Gaza are being forced to endure have created a petri dish for disease. These are diseases that thrive where people lack water – clean or otherwise – and are stuck in over-crowded unsanitary environments with almost no food,” Khalidi said.  

“There is a grim and deliberate inevitability as to what Israel has created in Gaza. Each day that its siege continues and it denies aid, starvation becomes increasingly widespread and human deaths from entirely preventable diseases becomes an absolute certainty.” 

“As Gaza bakes in the summer sun and the hottest month of the year looms, it is increasingly urgent that Israel’s siege must end. It is shameful Israel has been allowed to besiege Gaza and create this catastrophe. Nothing other than complete access to Gaza to deliver aid at scale can alleviate the conditions that people have been forced to live in.” 

“Each day we wait for a ceasefire, more lives are lost through violence, hunger and disease. Palestinians in Gaza cannot wait a day longer for this hell to end. There must be a full and complete ceasefire, and all required aid must be able to enter via all crossings into Gaza so that Palestinians can finally begin to recover and rebuild.”