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Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, eastern Rafah evacuations
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The “necessary conditions for survival are absent” in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, as medical facilities have been stretched to the limit, according to a report from Medical NGO Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
The devastation in Rafah extends “far beyond those killed by Israeli bombardments and airstrikes”, saying that deaths as a result of the disruption to critical healthcare are “silent killings” that are “equally tragic.”
It notes a “marked deterioration” in people’s health, with rising rates of “acute malnutrition”, medical facilities that are “inundated with patients and operating beyond their limits”, and the current medical response “rendered ineffective by the Israeli authorities’ siege”.
“This crisis is entirely man-made; what is being witnessed is a situation of deliberate deprivation,” MSF wrote in the report released on April 29.
The current situation could result in “tens of thousands of non-trauma-related” deaths that could happen in the next six months, even in the event of a ceasefire, the report said.
Malnutrition: Between January 2024 and the end of March 2024, MSF registered 216 cases of moderate and severe acute malnutrition in children under five at Al-Shaboura and Al-Mawasi primary healthcare centers in Rafah and 25 cases among pregnant women and new mothers.
These figures represent only a small part of the larger reality, as they are based on screening of patients coming to the primary healthcare centers, while many people in Rafah do not have access to MSF’s services,” the report said.
“The more than one million Palestinian men, women and children who have risked everything to seek refuge in Rafah remain exposed to serious physical and mental harm, with no information about the future besides the confirmation of an imminent invasion of Rafah by the Israeli army,” it added.
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