UN Staff Faint from Hunger and WHO Worker Detained
Gaza’s Health System on Brink as WHO Reports Attacks, visa Denials
Table of Contents
GENEVA - Humanitarian operations in Gaza are being squeezed into an “ever-shrinking space,” with the World Health Association (WHO) reporting a series of grave incidents, including attacks on its staff and premises, and a critically important increase in visa denials for essential medical teams. These challenges are severely hampering efforts to sustain gaza’s collapsing health system and reach over two million peopel in desperate need.
Attacks on WHO Facilities and Staff
Tarik Jasarevic,spokesperson for the WHO,briefed journalists in Geneva on Monday’s attacks on a building housing WHO staff in Deir Al-Balah,central Gaza. The incidents, which included airstrikes causing a fire and significant damage to the building and its main warehouse, exposed staff and their families, including children, to “grave danger and traumatised” them.
Israeli military forces reportedly entered the premises, forcing women and children to evacuate on foot towards the coastal shelter of Al Mawasi amidst active conflict.
Screened at Gunpoint
The WHO spokesperson detailed harrowing accounts of staff and family members being “handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot and screened at gunpoint.” Two staff members and two family members where detained. While three were later released, one WHO employee remains in detention for reasons unknown to the organization.
Mr. Jasarevic called for the immediate release of the detained staff member, emphasizing that “no one should be held without charges and without due process.”
The latest evacuation order for the Deir Al-Balah area has impacted several WHO premises, compromising its on-the-ground presence and “crippling efforts to sustain a collapsing health system.” This further pushes survival “further out of reach for more then two million people.”
The Israeli military operation also caused an explosion and fire inside WHO’s main warehouse in Deir Al-Balah, which the agency described as “part of a pattern of systematic destruction of health facilities.”
According to Gaza’s health authorities, the ongoing conflict has resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,500 health workers since October 2023. A staggering 94 percent of all health facilities have sustained damage, with half of gaza’s hospitals rendered “not functional at all.”
“the chance to prevent loss of lives and reverse immense damage to the health system slips further out of reach every day,” Mr. Jasarevic stressed.
visa Denials Hamper Medical Access
Further compounding the humanitarian crisis, the WHO spokesperson highlighted an increase in visa denials by Israeli authorities for emergency medical teams seeking to enter Gaza. since the breakdown of the latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on March 18,58 international staff,including surgeons and critical medical specialists,have been denied access.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Denied Entry
Ms.Touma, a spokesperson for the UN relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), also pointed to access restrictions. She noted that the agency’s Commissioner-General has been denied entry to Gaza as March 2024 and has not received a visa from Israel to enter the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for over a year.
The UNRWA spokesperson also deplored the lack of access for international media to the enclave. “It certainly is time, if not long overdue, for international media to go into gaza precisely to look into the facts and to help with reporting frist-hand facts on the horrors that people in gaza are living through,” she stated.