Cases of Water-Borne Illnesses Surge in Gaza Under Israeli Blockade: Oxfam

Oxfam International said Wednesday that cases of water-borne illnesses are surging in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli government continues to impede the flow of desperately needed humanitarian assistance, depriving Palestinians of access to uncontaminated water, medicine, food, and other necessities.

The aid organization said that health data from the besieged enclave "shows that the numbers of Palestinians presenting to health facilities with acute watery diarrhea have increased by 150%, bloody diarrhea by 302%, and acute jaundice cases by 101%"—figures that likely understate the extent of the health crisis given that many Gazans lack access to healthcare facilities.

The enclave's manufactured hunger crisis has worsened the spread of disease, as malnutrition weakens the immune system, particularly in children.

"The conditions that Palestinians in Gaza are being forced to endure have created a Petri dish for disease. These are diseases that thrive where people lack water—clean or otherwise—and are stuck in overcrowded, unsanitary environments with almost no food," said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy lead in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.

"There is a grim and deliberate inevitability as to what Israel has created in Gaza. Each day that its siege continues and it denies aid, starvation becomes increasingly widespread and human deaths from entirely preventable diseases becomes an absolute certainty," Khalidi continued. "It is shameful Israel has been allowed to besiege Gaza and create this catastrophe. Nothing other than complete access to Gaza to deliver aid at scale can alleviate the conditions that people have been forced to live in."

The spread of disease has been a major concern of humanitarian organizations and the United Nations since Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip following the deadly Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The World Health Organization warned the month after Israel began its assault that disease could ultimately be a bigger killer than bombs in the Gaza Strip.

Khalidi said Wednesday that each day the Israeli siege continues, "starvation becomes increasingly widespread and human deaths from entirely preventable diseases becomes an absolute certainty."

Gaza's Ministry of Health said Thursday that at least 113 Palestinians, most of them children, have died of starvation in the enclave since October 2023.

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said in a statement Thursday that a colleague told him people in Gaza "are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses."

"When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food and care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold," said Lazzarini. "Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak, and at high risk of dying if they don't get the treatment they urgently need."