Skin infections and hepatitis spread as Gazans resort to drinking and bathing in contaminated water

Due to polluted water, there are bacteria that have affected the skin and brought the blistering rash, doctors informed the mother of 7-month-old Sobhia. 
 
The infant who was born few months into the Israel-Hamas war is among other children in Gaza developing diseases that are as a result of drinking or even taking baths in treated water, families, doctors and NGOs based in the said region revealed. Some of the more frequently seen diseases range from hepatitis to skin diseases. 
 
When speaking to the media in an interview last month, Samar Hamoda, Sobhia’s mother, stated that the family had to leave the north of Gaza and is now living in a purely evacuation area in the southern city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military told residents to evacuate areas in eastern Khan Younis on Friday. 
 
“We came here to even worse conditions,” Moved by his spirit, Hamoda said those words. “No clean place to stay in, and we did not find potable water so we could shower our children. ” 
 
Sobhia was given some medicine she said, but the family could not locate any hospital or clinic that could dispense the medicine for free let alone the fact that the medicine was too expensive for her to afford. 
 
Gaza currently uses wells and desalination plants most of which have being severely destroyed. Last month the international aid group Oxfam International said that all the desalination plants in Gaza and 88 percent of the water wells had been either destroyed or affected. 
 
In addition, Sewage treatment plants in all of Gaza districts and 70% of the sewage pump has been destroyed said Oxfam. Accordingly, the quantity of freshwater available in the strip has declined by 94% since when the war began, to below 5 liters per individual per day, the group opined. The United Nations goes further, claiming that an individual in an emergency requires a minimum of 15 litres per day. 
 
Neither Israeli authorities has seen relevant request commenting on the occurrence of diseases as a result of contaminated water in Gaza. However, the official source, Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories or COGAT informed on X that it has set up a team devoted to addressing sanitation problems in the territory which presupposes waste removal and providing the power supply for the water desalination plant. 
 
“In further measures designed to address the question of sanitation in Gaza, the team is presently trying to fix the wells, enhance the desalination plants and extend the water lines,” asserted COGAT. 
 
Other attempts establishing by humanitarian groups to fix the most required facilities, to put septic tank and provide clean water and chlorine tables are heavily restricted because they have little or no access to it. So inhabitants continue dousing and washing themselves in untreated raw sewage that comes from the sea without a bar of soap or disinfectant. 
 
“Currently, you are not getting a steady supply of safe, potable water through tanker truck imports across the border; you are not operating the desalination plant, and you are not running the wastewater treatment plant to contain fecal pollution, “said eh Morrison Senior Vice President, CSIS, a Washington DC-based nonprofit organization. 
 
Drinking contaminated water or eating food consumed by a person with hepatitis A means the consumer may develop this liver disease; hepatitis A can cure by itself but inadequate nutrition and cleanliness raises the likelihood of worsening the sickness. 
 
“The current epidemic of Hepatitis A is frequent in Gaza Strip due to unhygenic environment, poor quality food and water pollution,” Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, Nasser Children’s Hospital Khan Younis, during mid of period June. 
 
He described a case of a 4-year-old boy that was admitted in his hospital with Liver failure resulting from Hepatitis A, the boy needed a transplant “which is not available in Gaza Strip, even before the war” Al-Farra said. 
 
The United Nation’s health organization stated that since the beginning of the warfare, approximately thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety-five individuals in Gaza contracted hepatitis A, but only a total of eighty-five cases were reported from the end of October of the year twenty-two up to the middle of July of the year twenty-three. Besides, 1. 3 million new acute respiratory infections, over half a million new cases of acute diarrhoea and more over 100 new cases of jaundice will be seen. WHO reported from October to late June, skin related symptoms occurred in about 65,000 students, while more than 103,000 students were also affected by scabies and lice. 
 
At least thirty water wells in southern Gaza including Khan Younis were polled last month by Alaa Al-Bata the mayor of the area. 
 
“The management has discovered that a large part of the other wells are located in the evacuation areas and that may be destroyed,” he said. As can be seen, one of the most serious problems the people of a particular region are faced with is a lack of water. 
 
Nasrin Al-Qarra, a woman displaced with her family and living in Khan Younis at the time of the study last week said there are long queues for bathing water. 
 
Salty water is consumed numerous times, she added. “We do not think about what will happen to us later, the important thing is that I am drinking when I am thirsty and that is all. ” 
 
The UN says that work is being done to reconnect the electricity to a desalination plant in southern Gaza, which could provide the above mentioned one million people with clean drinking water. 
 
But in the meantime, health threats associated with dirty water keep mounting: In June, polio was confirmed in six samples of wastewater in Gaza after the vaccination coverage in the region decreased last year. There are no other reported polio cases, new or old; however, the WHO stresses the high likelihood of polio to spread to Gaza. It’s also transmitted through the consumption of water tainted with feces of an affected person by a virus. 
 
The WHO aims at supplying better Equipments and machines in order to meet the need of the patients and the WHO will provide 1. over two million polio vaccines in the coming weeks to address the health dangers growing in the gaza strip. The Israeli military did not reply to a question on the risk of polio in the enclave but the COGAT has said on Tuesday to X that it should support the polio vaccination ad has been in contact with the WHO and UNICEF on the situation. The Israeli military has also acknowledged it would administer polio vaccines to its troops in Gaza. 
 
But Morrison said the vaccination effort faces major challenges: The doses are required to be kept in cold temperatures so that they do not get spoiled and it is questionable whether there is adequate medical personnel to administer the doses. 
 
“Yes, we know that the best approach to reach out and vaccinate children severally is to do so in their homes,” he said. “Well, here you are not getting people in their homes,”