Rafah is “hanging on the edge of a precipice” and those left in the southern Gazan city, including 600,000 children, are the most vulnerable and living in “shocking” conditions, according to an official with the United Nations Children’s Fund in Rafah.
“(They are) living in a very difficult conditions under tents, makeshift tarpaulins, under shocking sanitary conditions because there’s no effective sewage system here,” Hamish Young, UNICEF’s senior emergency coordinator for Gaza, told CNN on Thursday.
“The level of acute watery diarrhea, which… can kill children quite easily, is now 20 times higher than what it was this time last year.”
Young said that malnutrition rates in Rafah are increasing, and children are “in real trouble” after the closure of one of the main hospitals in the city “greatly reduced the ability for children to reach medical services.”
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that hospitals in southern Gaza only have three days of fuel left, “which means services may soon come to a halt.”
“It’s two days of fuel now,” said Young.
“We’re rationing the fuel already for hospitals, scaling down operations as we can. When that fuel runs out, life support systems in hospitals stop.”
If the generators stop running, patients on ventilators and children relying on incubators are at extreme risk, he said.
“People on ventilators, I don’t know what happens to them when the ventilator stops running. Children in incubators, little tiny babies, often it’s two and three jammed into one incubator because we haven’t been able to bring enough in,” Young said.
“Probably a large number will die when the fuel runs out.”
