“The announcement of a ceasefire earlier this month was a welcome relief. However, the reality on the ground is very different.” said Cristhian Cortez Cardoza, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, a partner of the United Nations.
Speaking from Beirut after returning from Tehran, Cardoza insisted that “a ceasefire does not mean the conflict is over.” The consequences of weeks of “intense conflict” will continue to be felt in Iranian society “for months and years to come,” he said.
Hundreds of Iranian health facilities have been damaged or destroyed, the International Federation official explained, and There is growing concern about medical access and potential shortages of key services.such as dialysis machines and prosthetics, due to the destruction of manufacturing.
Due to the war, the IFRC factory that supplies 60 percent of the country’s dialysis filters It only has enough raw materials to continue production for the next three months..
Destruction of Gaza
Meanwhile, the situation remains precarious in Gaza, with more than 1,800 health centers partially or completely destroyed, according to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).
“It ranges from large hospitals like Al Shifa in Gaza City to smaller primary health care centers, clinics, pharmacies and laboratories,” said the agency’s new representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Dr. Reinhilde Van de Weerdt.
Speaking from Jerusalem, Dr. Van de Weerdt reported on her first visit to Gaza as the new WHO representative.
“I just spent my first week in Gaza earlier this month and nothing really prepares you for the magnitude of the destruction. You can read the reports, study the figures, but being on the street, in the middle of endless piles of rubble several meters high, is something else..”
Tents, debris and rats
Across Gaza, most Palestinian families remain displaced, the veteran humanitarian noted. “They live in tents among the rubble, depending on humanitarian assistance to meet their most basic needs. And despite the ceasefire, airstrikes, shelling and shooting continued.”
In addition to those dangers, more than 17,000 cases of rodent-related infections have been reported among displaced Gazans so far this year and more than 80 percent of displacement sites report skin infections, such as scabies, lice and bed bugs. “The unfortunate but predictable consequence when people live in a collapsed living environment,” the WHO official said.
“WHO and health partners need to better understand the diseases affecting the population of Gaza. Therefore, we need laboratory equipment and supplies to enter Gaza. As many of you know, these equipment and supplies do not enter Gaza, which leaves us blind.”
To address this growing health threat, “things must change,” Dr. Van de Weerdt insisted. “Healthcare and healthcare workers need to be protected; Essential medicines and supplies must enter Gaza.. “Bureaucratic processes and restrictions on access to these globally recognized essential medicines and supplies must be removed.”
‘Dynamic threat’
Echoing that message, the head of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory underlined the ever-present danger posed by unexploded ordnance throughout the shattered enclave.
The lethal threat is now “essentially rooted or embedded in the rubble at this point,” said Julius Dirk Van Der Walt, head of UNMAS, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“We have barely scratched the surface of understanding what level of contamination we will encounter in Gaza.”he continued.
“What we do know is that it will be a dynamic threat… there will be families that will return to their homes; a father would perhaps walk into the house, find a hand grenade and want to take it from his children.”