Children disfigured as skin diseases tear through Gaza

A lack of clean water and basic sanitation has led to outbreaks of painful infections

Children in Gaza are being badly disfigured by painful but easily treatable skin conditions because of a near-total lack of basic sanitation, aid workers have warned.
Severe shortages of medicines, hygiene products and clean water in the ravaged coastal enclave are all fuelling a surge in infections of skin ulcers and scabies, they told The Telegraph.
More than 150,000 people in Gaza have contracted skin diseases since the start of Israel’s military offensive in October, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Scabies has been the most prevalent, with at least 100,000 cases recorded. The symptoms include intense itching, which worsen at night or with intense heat, such as Gaza has been experiencing.
The WHO has also recorded 11,000 cases of lice, 65,000 cases of chickenpox and 65,000 cases of skin rashes.
“This rise in skin conditions is particularly concerning given the dire living conditions faced by the majority of Gaza’s population,” said Julie Faucon, Medical Coordinator at Doctors Without Borders (MSF), based in Jerusalem.
“Implementing effective hygiene measures under these circumstances is exceedingly difficult,” she told The Telegraph.
MSF has recorded a nearly 50 per cent surge in skin disease in recent weeks.
Efforts to try and treat those afflicted have been complicated by persistent Israeli strikes and relocation orders, which mean many Gazans have had even more difficulty accessing healthcare facilities, Ms Faucon added.
Ghada Alhaddad, from Oxfam, currently in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza, said that most of the patients being seen by dermatologists she visited are children.
One six-year-old girl had “red rashes” on her hands from the poor quality soap and water she uses to do the laundry for her family after her mother was killed.
“Usually the doctors would prescribe medicines for skin diseases, but most of the pharmacies in Gaza have run out of medicines,” she told The Telegraph.
Asma, the mother of a seven-year-old boy who has been treated by MAP, said that they have resorted to using sea water for cooking, washing and laundry, due to the lack of clean water.
“My son can’t sleep through the night because he can’t stop scratching his body. We sleep on the ground, and he plays on sand where worms come out underneath us,” she told Medical Aid for Palestinian (MAP), from a United Nations school in Deir al Balah where she is sheltering.
“We cannot bathe our children as before…there’s nothing. The sea is all sewage.”
Since July, Medical Aid for Palestinian (MAP) have recorded more than 4,100 preventable skin infections, including scabies, chicken pox, bullous impetigo and nonbullous impetigo.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said that the “collapse” of the waste management system in Gaza had created “a dangerous recipe for diseases to spread”.
“Piles of trash are accumulating in the scorching summer heat. Sewage discharges on the streets while people queue for hours just to go to the toilets,” he said.
Continued Israeli shelling has badly damaged Gaza’s water system.
All of Gaza’s desalination plants, 88 per cent of its water wells, and 70 per cent of all sewage, as well as the main water quality testing laboratories have all been damaged during the conflict, according to a report published by Oxfam last month.
Owing to the destruction of water facilities, the obstruction of aid and the severing of external water supplies, Gazans have around 4.7 litres of water per person per day for all purposes including drinking, cooking and bathing, it found.
This is less than a third of the recommended minimum for emergencies of at least 15 litres per day, according to the United Nations.
Last month, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), the Israeli body responsible for facilitating aid in Gaza, said that it had established a team to address sanitation issues.
“The team is also exploring additional measures to improve sanitation in Gaza, including repairing wells, upgrading desalination plants, and extending water lines,” it said.
Aid groups have attempted to repair the infrastructure, install septic tanks and distribute clean water and chlorine tablets, but working in the Gaza Strip remains extremely difficult.
“The humanitarian aid we’ve been able to deliver so far, including water bottles, medical supplies, and hygiene kits, has been nowhere near enough to meet the scale of this crisis,” said Alison Griffin, Head of Conflict and Humanitarian Campaigns at Save the Children UK.
MAP’s Deputy Director of Programmes in Gaza, Mohammed Al Khatib, who is based in Khan Younis, said that it is the complex interaction of high temperatures, the ruptured sewage system and “solid waste everywhere” that has fuelled the surge in emerging infectious diseases.
Earlier this month, the United Nations reported a major outbreak of Hepatitis A, an inflammation of the liver caused by the virus of the same name, among children in the crowded enclave.
“Almost everyone I know has somebody in his or her family who has been contacted with hepatitis A, including our staff,” said Ms Alhaddad.
“Usually, doctors ask people to quarantine for hepatitis A, but this is something quite impossible.People are encamped in small areas, sometimes multiple families live in one tent,” she said.
“When people describe the scenes [in Gaza] as tragic, I feel that the word now does injustice, words cannot describe the tragedies that we are seeing on the ground.”
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