Sanitary waste management crisis in Gaza becoming ...

Sanitary waste management crisis in Gaza becoming a long-term health problem.

Agathe

Zim Now Writer

The United Nations Development Program has warned of infections caused by unsanitary conditions in the Palestinian enclave, and of the danger posed by the destruction of the medical waste treatment system.

Before the war, the UNDP supported this system in the enclave, in partnership with municipal services and the private sector. One of UNDP's managers, Chitose Noguchi, on a mission to the enclave in the first week of August, deplored the impact of insalubrity on the health of Palestinians. Numerous cases of hepatitis A, respiratory illnesses and diarrhoea have been reported. Recently, a 10-month-old Gazan baby was affected by a first case of poliomyelitis, confirmed on Friday August 16. According to the UN, the Gaza Strip had not seen this disease for 25 years.

According to Chitose Noguchi, interviewed by Le Monde, the solid waste treatment system has collapsed. The health situation is worsening, with solid waste piling up more and more. The UNDP team has been displaced many times by the Israeli authorities, and access to the north of the strip is extremely restricted. But whether in the south at Khan-Younès or in the center at Deir Al-Balah, the situation is critical.

Nearly 140 rubbish dumps have sprung up there since the start of the war, and the garbage is piling up close to the population, which includes almost all of the 2.4 million Palestinians displaced by the war. It's all there: the smell, the rats, the state of decomposition of the garbage cans that have been piled up near the tents for months. “In Deir Al-Balah, I saw medical waste - syringes, gloves... - mixed in with the household garbage. The inhabitants are deprived of hygiene, they don't even have water to wash themselves, and live in very dense areas.”

This overcrowding causes a rapid spread of disease: many children suffer increasingly from skin diseases, and polio has made its appearance. A vaccination campaign is due to start, involving 600,000 children according to UNICEF: the UN is calling for humanitarian breaks for these operations. With this disease in particular, the health crisis will have lasting harmful effects on the population, with several thousand children paralyzed without the vaccine.

Since the beginning of the conflict, the UNDP's difficulties have been exacerbated: bombardments are continuous and everyday activities, such as waste collection, are hampered. The capacities of municipal and private partners have been decimated: employees have been killed, and the number of vehicles available has been drastically reduced.

Today, even if the UNDP is trying to find solutions, efforts are often reduced to nothing. The sterilization systems put in place before the war have been decimated: medical microwaves, autoclaves for sterilization... The proliferation of landfill mingles with medical waste, which is extremely toxic. Starvation is driving some people to scavenge, and children playing with used syringes are also exposed.

The current aim is to remove as much waste as possible from the places where people live or interact, and to move it to other temporary landfill sites. But this is only a short-term solution. Since January, the UNDP has collected 90,000 tonnes of waste in the South, i.e. around 60% of the amount produced.