Gaza's broken water system crippling children with sickness
World
Eight months of war have reduced nine-year-old Yunis Jumaa to skin and bone, BBC News reports.
Stretched out, semi-unconscious on a hospital bed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, his twisted frame is hard to look at.
His arms and legs like matchsticks, his knee joints bulging, his chest heaves with the skin stretched tight over his rib cage.
“My son was in excellent health before, he was normal,” says his mother Ghanima Jumaa. “But when he developed this malnutrition and dehydration, he became as you see him now.”
“There is no bottled water. The children walk a long distance - when they get water it reaches us contaminated,” Ghanima says.
And with their houses destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are now displaced, living under canvas in makeshift camps, with little protection from the scorching sun.
Getting water, whether it is clean or not, is a daily struggle. Long queues form at distribution centres.
With the sewage system badly damaged and with few toilets, what water there is is easily contaminated.
“It is no secret that the biggest cause of intestinal infections currently occurring in the Gaza Strip is the contamination of the water supplied to these children,” says Dr Ahmed al-Fari, head of the children’s departments at Nasser Hospital.
“The first problem is intestinal infections with vomiting and diarrhoea which causes dehydration,” he says. “The second problem is hepatitis C or A, which are no less dangerous than intestinal infections, if not more so.”
“We need a tremendous international effort to re-establish water and sewage networks,” says Salaam Sharab, who’s a water engineer in the Khan Younis municipality. “We in Khan Younis have lost between 170 and 200km of pipes, which have been completely destroyed, along with wells and water tanks.”
It is worth noting that the United Nations has warned that more than a million Gazans face the highest level of starvation by the middle of July.
His arms and legs like matchsticks, his knee joints bulging, his chest heaves with the skin stretched tight over his rib cage.
“My son was in excellent health before, he was normal,” says his mother Ghanima Jumaa. “But when he developed this malnutrition and dehydration, he became as you see him now.”
“There is no bottled water. The children walk a long distance - when they get water it reaches us contaminated,” Ghanima says.
And with their houses destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are now displaced, living under canvas in makeshift camps, with little protection from the scorching sun.
Getting water, whether it is clean or not, is a daily struggle. Long queues form at distribution centres.
With the sewage system badly damaged and with few toilets, what water there is is easily contaminated.
“It is no secret that the biggest cause of intestinal infections currently occurring in the Gaza Strip is the contamination of the water supplied to these children,” says Dr Ahmed al-Fari, head of the children’s departments at Nasser Hospital.
“The first problem is intestinal infections with vomiting and diarrhoea which causes dehydration,” he says. “The second problem is hepatitis C or A, which are no less dangerous than intestinal infections, if not more so.”
“We need a tremendous international effort to re-establish water and sewage networks,” says Salaam Sharab, who’s a water engineer in the Khan Younis municipality. “We in Khan Younis have lost between 170 and 200km of pipes, which have been completely destroyed, along with wells and water tanks.”
It is worth noting that the United Nations has warned that more than a million Gazans face the highest level of starvation by the middle of July.
Powered by Froala Editor