<\/strong> <\/p>\n Six hospitals in Gaza have been forced to close due to a lack of fuel, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to the hospitals that have had to close due to damage and attacks, six hospitals across the Gaza Strip have already shut down due to lack of fuel,\u201d the WHO\u2019s statement reads. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnless vital fuel and additional health supplies are urgently delivered into Gaza,\u201d the WHO warned \u201cthousands of vulnerable patients risk death\u201d unless \u201cvital fuel and additional health supplies\u201d were delivered. <\/p>\n
Save the Children said Monday that over 1 million children are \u201ctrapped\u201d in Gaza with no safe place to go and warned of the devastating impacts of lacking medication and electricity to power vital health infrastructure in the enclave. <\/p>\n
And a major United Nations agency in Gaza warned that it will have to stop aid operations in Gaza on Wednesday unless fuel is allowed into the enclave. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf we do not get fuel urgently, we will be forced to halt our operations in the #GazaStrip as of tomorrow night,\u201d the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) wrote on social media Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Gaza needs at least 160,000 litres (42,267 gallons) of fuel a day, not just to fuel UNRWA facilities, but also to power hospitals, bakeries, and other basic necessities, a spokeswoman for the organization, Juliette Touma, said. <\/p>\n
Despite the urgency, no fuel trucks have entered Gaza as part of a humanitarian aid convoy from Egypt\u2019s Rafah border crossing over the weekend, according to Israeli and UN authorities. <\/p>\n
However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff provided a glimmer of hope on Tuesday, saying efforts will be made to provide access to fuel to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. He reiterated Israel\u2019s position that it would \u201cnot allow\u201d the fuel to reach Hamas \u201cso they can continue fighting against the citizens of Israel.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will make sure there will be fuel in places where they need fuel to treat civilians,\u201d said Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said, without providing further detail on how the IDF might get fuel to those most in need. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment we have no interest in more fuel going to the Hamas military machine and we have not authorized fuel, we have authorized medicine, we have authorized water. We\u2019ve authorized foodstuffs, we\u2019ve not authorized anything else,\u201d Regev said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe government decision is that fuel doesn\u2019t go in because it will be stolen by Hamas and it\u2019ll be used by them to power rockets that are fired into Israel to kill our people.\u201d <\/p>\n
The UN is \u201cwatching closely\u201d for signs that Hamas is diverting humanitarian aid meant for civilians in Gaza, and have not reported any such signs to date, the US State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Monday. <\/p>\n
On Monday, Hamas freed two Israeli citizens \u2013 both older women \u2013 amid growing international pressure to secure the release of the rest of those abducted and taken to Gaza. One of the recently freed captives, 85-year-old grandmother Yocheved Lifshitz later described her ordeal after she was kidnapped by gunmen and taken to Gaza, saying she \u201cwent through hell.\u201d <\/p>\n
Their release follows that of two American hostages, Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie Raanan, who were freed on Friday. <\/p>\n
In Gaza, outbreaks of chickenpox, scabies, and diarrhea have emerged due to the deteriorating health environment, lack of sanitation, and consumption of water from unsafe sources, according to the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health based in the occupied West Bank. <\/p>\n
Hospitals are nearing collapse, operating at more than 150% of their capacity and situations have become so dire that surgeries are being conducted without anesthesia, and in some cases, under the illumination of phone lights, the Palestinian Authority health ministry added. <\/p>\n
Around 50,000 pregnant women are struggling to access health care, with about 166 unsafe births happening daily, and more than 5,000 women due to give birth in the next month, it said. <\/p>\n
The Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City \u2013 the largest hospital in the enclave \u2013 has enough fuel to last a maximum of two days, according to senior surgeon Marwan Abusada on Monday. <\/p>\n
Conditions in Al-Shifa are dire, with another doctor saying that without electricity, the hospital \u201cwill just be a mass grave\u201d and \u201cthere\u2019s nothing to do for these wounded.\u201d <\/p>\n
fire and a proper humanitarian corridor, \u201cthere\u2019s going to be an even larger catastrophe that the one that already exists here.\u201d <\/p>\n
The overwhelmed hospital has run out of burns dressings for the more than 100 patients in the facility with burns covering over 40% of their bodies, Abu-Sittah said. More than 150 patients on ventilators with critical injuries are relying on electricity to stay alive, he said. <\/p>\n
Hospitals across Gaza are facing similar situations. <\/p>\n
Hatem Edhair, head of Neonatal ICU at Nasser Medical Complex, said all non-emergency facilities have been turned off, as well as lights and air conditioning. <\/p>\n
He said 11 babies \u2013 most weighing under 1.5 kilograms \u2013 are in his neonatal intensive care unit, with admission rates rising as residents from northern Gaza flee south. <\/p>\n
Twenty more trucks carrying vital relief aid crossed into Gaza Monday, but aid agencies warn that the current rate of delivery will do little to address the needs of more than 2 million people living in the enclave. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That\u2019s half of 1% \u2013 or one two-hundredth \u2013 of the amount of aid it ordinarily receives. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated. <\/em> <\/p>\n Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that chickenpox, not smallpox, has emerged in Gaza according to the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health<\/p>\n\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tempers flared at the United Nations on Tuesday amid ceasefire calls, as aid groups and doctors in Gaza warn that power shortages threaten the lives of vulnerable infants and patients. Aid agencies have been calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, with one saying at least 2,000 children in Gaza have been killed in the past <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}