United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that Palestinian children in Gaza Strip do not receive 90 percent of their natural water consumption.
“Water and sanitation services in Gaza are on the verge of collapse, and newly displaced children in the southern Gaza Strip receive only 1.5 to 2 litres of water per day, far below the recommended survival requirements.
“Concerns about waterborne diseases such as cholera and chronic diarrhoea are particularly high due to the lack of potable water, especially after this week’s rains and floods.”
“Officials have already recorded about 20 times the monthly average of reported cases of diarrhea among children under five, as well as increases in cases of scabies, lice, chickenpox, rashes and more than 160,000 cases of acute respiratory infections,” the statement said.
In shelters across the Strip, long lines of exhausted women and children wait to use one toilet per 700 people on average, prompting people to resort to other coping strategies.
Since seven October, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza, leaving thousands dead and wounded most of them children and women, massive destruction of infrastructure and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, according to Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.
