Deir Al-Balah. When girls complain to Gaza pediatrician Lobna al-Azaiza that they don’t have a comb, she tells them to cut their hair. It’s not just about combs.
Israel’s blockade of the territory, ravaged by 10 months of war, means there is little shampoo, soap, menstrual products or household cleaning materials.
Garbage collection and sewage treatment have also collapsed, and it is easy to see why contagious diseases that thrive on overcrowding and poor cleanliness, such as scabies and fungal infections, are on the rise.
“In the recent period, the most common illness we have seen has been rashes, skin diseases, which have many causes, including overcrowding in the camps, increased heat inside the tents, sweating among children and lack of sufficient water for bathing,” the doctor said. Azaiza worked at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia until Israeli tanks separated the north of the besieged enclave from the south.
Like most doctors in Gaza, he adapted and continues to treat patients, walking to work past his own ruined home, demolished by an Israeli attack.
The field clinic he set up with a small team began serving children, but out of necessity it became a clinic for entire families, most of whom have also been ordered to leave their homes or have been bombed, like the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
Even available medicines are often unaffordable; a simple tube of burn ointment can now cost 200 shekels ($53). International aid deliveries have been drastically reduced since Israel seized control of the Rafah border crossing from Egypt, worsening the humanitarian crisis.
Azaiza has few doubts about the immediate solution: “We have to open the border crossing so that we can bring in medicines, since most of the current ones are ineffective: zero effect, there is no effect on the skin diseases that we see.”
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– 2024-08-19 01:33:07
