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disease
'Another Shitty Situation': Trump Attack on CDC Monitoring Blamed in 'Explosive Diarrhea' Outbreak
"The catastrophic cuts Trump and RFK Jr. made to disease surveillance and research keep coming back to haunt us," said one critic.
Jul 14, 2026
The Trump administration is coming under fire for its response to the outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a foodborne illness that causes explosive diarrhea and has so far been documented in more than two dozen states.
Public health officials still have not identified the source of the outbreak, which typically spreads via contaminated produce.
In an interview with Axios published Saturday, David Freedman, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, suggested that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not been on top of tracking the outbreak the same way it has been in the past.
"Right now it's individual state health departments that are having to speak up," remarked Freedman, "because the CDC is really not following it on a day-to-day basis."
Omer Awan, vice chair and associate program director for the diagnostic radiology residency at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, told PBS in an interview published Monday that infections will likely only grow if the government doesn't track down the source of the outbreak quickly.
"Because we haven't pinned it down, that means that these cases are likely to disseminate," said Awan. "People are still eating the contaminated food that's leading to so many cases."
Awan added that mass firings at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the leadership of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were hindering CDC's ability to track the disease.
"The HHS and the federal government laid off a lot of CDC employees," said Awan. "Many of them were the very employees that would track these particular outbreaks. And the other is that, from July of 2025 last year, the CDC has no longer required reporting cyclosporiasis. It's become optional to report this to the CDC's Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network."
Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, pointed to the CDC decision to stop monitoring the cyclospora parasite as an example of the Trump administration putting Americans "in another shitty situation after laying waste to our public health infrastructure and gutting emergency preparedness."
"Because RFK Jr.’s CDC turned a blind eye to dangerous foodborne pathogens," Woodhouse added, "this outbreak spread quickly and states are now scrambling to do their own detective work on what’s causing it. The catastrophic cuts Trump and RFK Jr. made to disease surveillance and research keep coming back to haunt us, yet they want to cut even deeper to make up for their tax breaks for billionaires."
The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that both federal and state officials have launched an investigation into whether fast food chain Taco Bell "played a role" in the cyclosporiasis outbreak.
According to the Post's sources, some people who got sick from the disease said they had eaten at Taco Bell shortly becoming symptomatic, although others who were infected by the parasite said they had not eaten at the fast food chain before growing ill.
"Public health officials have said this season’s unusually high number of illnesses, now reported in more than 30 states," reported the Post, "means more information and more patients to help identify shared foods, shopping habits and restaurant visits among those sickened to help determine the source."
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Cases of Water-Borne Illnesses Surge in Gaza Under Israeli Blockade: Oxfam
"It is shameful Israel has been allowed to besiege Gaza and create this catastrophe."
Jul 24, 2025
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."
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'Crisis of Disrupted Care': Nearly 800,000 Mpox Vaccines Meant for Africa Wasted Due to Trump USAID Cuts
Salim Abdool Karim, chair of the Africa CDC's emergency consultative group, has called Trump's "abrupt closure of USAID support for the mpox control effort in Africa" a "major blow."
Jul 18, 2025
Nearly 800,000 doses of the mpox vaccine, which were initially promised to fight the epidemic in Africa, are set to go to waste due to Trump's cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
According to Politico, which quotes the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the vaccine doses cannot be shipped because they are too close to their expiration date.
"For a vaccine to be shipped to a country, we need a minimum of six months before expiration to ensure that the vaccine can arrive in good condition and also allow the country to implement the vaccination," said Yap Boum, an Africa CDC deputy incident manager.
In September, the Biden administration pledged that the U.S. would provide more than 1 million doses to fight the epidemic in Africa, which has killed nearly 2,000 people, many of them children.
However, Politico reports that just 91,000 of them were delivered, and only 220,000 of them still have a long enough shelf life to be used if the Trump administration signs off on them.
The continent is already facing a dangerous shortage of mpox immunizations. As Science reported last month:
In September 2024, Africa CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) jointly issued an mpox "continental preparedness and response plan" that called for vaccinating 10 million people in Africa within 6 months. An updated version of the plan, issued in April, narrowed who should be offered the vaccine and scaled back the target to 6.4 million people by August.
But according to a May 29 WHO situation report, only 720,000 people in seven African countries have received mpox vaccines. Doses are scarce, vaccination teams are short on health workers and transportation, and identifying who might have been exposed to the mpox virus and should get the vaccine first is a challenge.
Salim Abdool Karim, chair of the Africa CDC's emergency consultative group, called Trump's "abrupt closure of USAID support for the mpox control effort in Africa" a "major blow, especially since it played a key role in the logistics of vaccine storage and distribution."
A June report by Public Citizen put the striking shortfall of doses into even greater perspective. The group reported that Africa had nearly six times fewer doses of the vaccine than the United States had during the 2022-23 outbreak, which was markedly less severe than what Africa currently faces.
Graphic: Public Citizen www.citizen.org
They pointed to high prices charged by the vaccine's manufacturer, Bavarian Nordic. The company has sold the vaccines to UNICEF for $65 per dose, making them the second most expensive drug UNICEF pays for.
UNICEF called for Bavarian Nordic to quarter the price of the drug and increase doses available to fight the crisis, but the company did not respond to the request. As a result, UNICEF fell 350,000 doses short of the one million that it had hoped to commit.
This shortfall was made worse by the actions taken by the Trump administration. While halting USAID operations, the U.S. also ceased cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO), which is a major player in organizing the allocation of vaccines.
The Trump administration's actions, the report said, have "prompted a concurrent crisis of disrupted care and severe funding shortfalls across a range of disease areas and health services."
Mpox vaccines are not the only form of international aid going to waste as a direct result of the Trump administration's cuts to USAID.
On Monday, Hana Kiros reported in The Atlantic that the Trump administration had given the order "to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it":
Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire [Tuesday], according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash.
The Trump administration formally shut down USAID on July 1, after cancelling 83% of its programs at the beginning of Trump's term.
On the same day, a study was published in The Lancet, revealing that the organization's efforts over the past two decades had saved over 90 million lives, with the biggest reductions in mortality coming from its work to prevent HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other tropical diseases.
"Is [USAID] a good use of resources? We found that the average taxpayer has contributed about 18 cents per day to USAID," James Macinko, a health policy researcher at UCLA and study co-author, told NPR. "For that small amount, we've been able to translate that into saving up to 90 million deaths around the world."
According to Impact Counter, a database created by Brooke Nichols, associate professor of global health at the Boston University School of Public Health, nearly 250,000 children and 120,000 adults already had died over less than six months as a result of cuts to these programs, as of June 26.
According to the Lancet study, if those cuts extend into 2030, 14 million people who might otherwise have lived—including millions more children—might die.
"These deaths will not be the result of droughts, earthquakes, pandemics, or war," said Olivier De Schutter in a piece published Friday in Common Dreams. "They will be the direct consequence of a single, lethal decision made by one of the wealthiest men to ever walk this planet."
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Climate Change Fueling 'Most Widespread and Damaging' Droughts in History: UN Report
"This is not a dry spell," said the co-author of a new U.N. report. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe."
Jul 03, 2025
Climate change is driving "some of the most widespread and damaging drought events in recorded history," according to a report published Wednesday on global drought hotspots.
Over the past two years, droughts have fueled increased food insecurity, dehydration, and disease that have heightened poverty and political instability in several regions of the world, according to research by the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
"This is not a dry spell," says Dr. Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC Director. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on."
The report examined conditions in some of the globe's most drought-prone regions. They found that the economic disruption caused by droughts today is twice as high as in 2000.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, which have been blighted with dangerously low levels of rainfall, more than 90 million people face acute hunger.
Somalia has been hit particularly hard, with 4.4 million, more than a quarter of the population, facing "crisis level" food insecurity in early 2025. Zambia, meanwhile, faced one of the world's worst energy crises last year when the Zambezi River dried up, causing its hydroelectric dams to run critically low.
Other drought-plagued regions have seen wide ranges of ecological and economic disruptions.
In Spain, low levels of rainfall in 2023 devastated olive crops, causing olive oil prices to double. In the Amazon Basin, low water levels caused a mass death of fish and endangered dolphins. The Panama Canal became so depleted that trade vessels were forced to re-route, causing multi-week shipping delays. And in Morocco, Eid celebrations had to be cancelled due to a shortage of sheep.
Recent studies of drought have found that they are increasingly caused not by lack of rainfall, but by aggressive heat, which speeds up evaporation. The areas hit the hardest over the past two years were ones already suffering from the most severe temperature increases. It was also exacerbated by a particularly severe El Niño weather cycle in 2023-24.
"This was a perfect storm," says report co-author Dr. Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC Assistant Director and drought impacts researcher. "El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits."
Though the effects of droughts are often felt most acutely in areas already suffering from poverty and instability, the researchers predict that as they get worse, the effects will be felt worldwide.
In 2024, then the hottest year on record, 48 of the 50 U.S. states faced drought conditions, the highest proportion ever seen. Drought in the U.S. has coincided with a dramatic increase in wildfire frequency and severity over the past 50 years.
"Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks," Smith said. "No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse."
The researchers advocated for investments in global drought prevention, but also for broader measures to address the existing inequalities that make droughts more severe.
"Drought has a disproportionate effect on those with few resources," Smith said. "We can act now to reduce the effects of future droughts by working to ensure that everyone has access to food, water, education, health care and economic opportunity."
The researchers also emphasized the urgency of coordinated action to confront the climate crisis.
"The struggles...to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming," said Svoboda. "No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent."
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'We Cannot Allow This to Happen Again': Israeli War on Lebanon Sparks Cholera Resurgence
"We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives," said Save the Children's Lebanon director.
Oct 23, 2024
Israel's invasion and intense bombardment of Lebanon—including recent attacks on hospitals and other medical infrastructure—have sparked a potentially catastrophic health crisis in the country, with cholera and other diseases spreading among the more than a million people who have been displaced over the past month.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was working to stem the spread of cholera after Lebanon's health ministry confirmed the country's first known case of the bacterial disease since a deadly outbreak that began in October 2022.
Particularly vulnerable to the worsening public health crisis are the hundreds of thousands of children who have been displaced by Israel's bombing and ground attacks. The United Nations Children's Fund stressed that cholera is a severe threat to kids under the age of 5, the unvaccinated, and those suffering from malnutrition.
The humanitarian group Save the Children said Tuesday that "over 400,000 children forced from their homes by the escalating conflict in Lebanon are at risk of skin diseases, cholera, and other waterborne diseases due to overcrowded, basic conditions in collective shelters and a lack of water and sanitation facilities."
Kamal Nasser El Deen, Save the Children Lebanon's emergency response coordinator, said Wednesday that he has been in "multiple" shelters in which families were forced to wait in long lines to access bathrooms.
"The facilities are inadequate for the number of people, and to make matters worse, the water supply is inconsistent," he continued. "This lack of clean, reliable water creates a significant risk for waterborne diseases. It's heartbreaking to know that these children, already displaced and vulnerable, face the additional threat of illness simply because basic needs like sanitation and clean water aren't being met."
"The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children's country director in Lebanon, likened the intensifying health crisis to the dire conditions in Gaza, which the U.S.-armed Israeli military has decimated with more than a year of relentless bombings and ground attacks, obliterating the enclave's healthcare system and causing the reemergence of polio. Experts have also warned of a looming cholera outbreak in Gaza.
"Thousands of vulnerable children are now unprotected and with winter just round the corner and temperatures dropping, they will become even more susceptible to diseases such as measles, meningitis, and hepatitis A," Moorehead said of the Lebanon crisis. "We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives. We cannot allow this to happen again. The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Save the Children's warning came as rescue teams searched the rubble for survivors in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that hit across the street from Beirut's main public hospital earlier this week, killing at least 18 people including four children.
"Hussein al-Ali, a nurse who was there when the attack happened, said it took him a few minutes to realize it was not the hospital that was hit. Dust and smoke covered the hospital lobby," The Associated Press reported Tuesday. "The glass in the dialysis unit, the pharmacy, and other rooms in the hospital was shattered. The false roof fell over his and his colleagues' heads."
Some hospitals and clinics operated by humanitarian groups have been forced to shut down due to Israel's military campaign. The New York Times noted that facilities that have not been damaged by Israeli bombings "have been abandoned after staff fled, fearing for their safety."
"The ones that remain operational say they are quickly running out of beds as patients evacuated from other facilities are brought in," the newspaper added.
The WHO said last week that it had verified nearly two dozen attacks on healthcare in Lebanon since mid-September. Those attacks killed at least 72 patients and healthcare workers, according to the U.N. body.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Tuesday that he was "appalled" by Israel's strike near Beirut's public hospital.
"Hospitals, ambulances, and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law because of their lifesaving function for the wounded and the sick," said Türk. "When conducting military operations in the vicinity of hospitals, parties to the conflict must assess the expected impact on healthcare services in relation to the principles of proportionality and precautions. Any incidents which affect hospitals must be subjected to a prompt and thorough investigation."
"I repeat the U.N.'s call for an immediate cessation to hostilities," he added, "and remind all parties that the protection of civilians must be the absolute top priority."
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'Horrific': Israeli Escalation Would Kill Another 85,000 Gazans in 6 Months, Study Shows
"Even in the best-case cease-fire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur," said the authors of a new report.
Feb 22, 2024
In an effort to put "at the front of people's minds and on the desks of decision-makers" the human cost of the U.S.-backed Israeli onslaught in Gaza, scientists on Wednesday said an escalation in the bombardment was projected to kill 85,000 Palestinians in the next six months—which would bring the total death toll to more than 114,000 people, or about 5% of Gaza's population, in less than a year.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine completed modeling for a report titled Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-Based Health Impact Projections, estimating the projected "excess deaths"—those above what would be been expected before the war—based on the health data available in Gaza before Israel began its air and ground attacks in October and the data that's been collected in more than four months of fighting.
The potential deaths of 85,000 additional people in the next six months represents the worst of three possible scenarios modeled by the researchers.
If bombing, shelling, and other ground attacks continue at their current pace, the scientists projected the killings of 58,260 Palestinians over the next six months.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, considers deaths from traumatic injuries as well as infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal health crises, and diseases for which patients have lost access to treatment, such as kidney disease or cancer. With 1 in 4 households in Gaza now facing "catastrophic" levels of hunger, according to the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Phase Classification, "nutritional status" was named as a risk factor in the study, but the researchers did not include starvation as a potential cause of excess deaths.
In the case of an outbreak of an infectious disease such as cholera—which public health experts have warned could happen due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid and a lack of potable water—66,720 people could die if the current level of violence continues.
"Even in the best-case cease-fire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur, mainly due to the time it would take to improve water, sanitation, and shelter conditions, reduce malnutrition, and restore functioning healthcare services in Gaza," the study reads.
If an immediate cease-fire were established, the researchers projected at least 6,500 additional deaths, as people would be expected to die of previous injuries or be killed by unexploded ordnance. The deaths of babies and women would also still be expected during and soon after childbirth, as complex care has become unavailable for many due to the collapse of the healthcare system, and undernourished children could die because of their reduced ability to fight off infections like pneumonia.
If a cease-fire began but an outbreak of a disease such as cholera, polio, or meningitis occurred, the scientists projected 11,580 people would die in Gaza between now and August.
Negotiations for a potential truce were underway on Thursday in Israel, where a U.S. envoy arrived as Israeli forces continued to bomb Rafah. About 1.5 million people are currently in the city in southern Gaza, with most having fled Israeli attacks on other cities.
"The decisions that are going to be taken over the next few days and weeks matter hugely in terms of the evolution of the death toll in Gaza," Francesco Checchi, professor of epidemiology and international health at LSHTM, told The New York Times Wednesday.
Despite the U.S. and Israeli governments' persistent claims that the Israel Defense Forces are seeking to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for an attack on southern Israel that it led in October, the United Nations has estimated that about 40% of the people killed in Gaza have been children. This trend would continue, according to the researchers, who projected that 42% of the Palestinians killed in the next six months would be under the age of 19.
Journalist Séamus Malekafzali called the scientists' projections "nothing short of horrific."
Checchi told the Times that the researchers wanted to put the projections "at the front of people's minds and on the desks of decision-makers, so that it can be said afterward that when these decisions were taken, there was some available evidence on how this would play out in terms of lives."
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World Food Program Economist Warns 'Worst Is Yet to Come' in Gaza
The U.N. organization's chief economist spoke with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders about the "unprecedented" crisis conditions in Gaza as Israel continues to wage war on the besieged enclave.
Jan 23, 2024
Nearly four months into Israel's blockade and bombardment that has killed about 25,500 people in the Gaza Strip, the World Food Program's chief economist warned Tuesday that the "worst is yet to come" in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
That warning from the WFP's Arif Husain came in a livestreamed conversation with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
"In my opinion, this crisis is unprecedented," Husain said. "Three things... make this unprecedented. One is the scale."
The vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are facing crisis-level hunger, as the WFP and other United Nations organizations have highlighted throughout the war, which Israel launched on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
"The second part is severity," Husain explained, with "half a million people literally starving." He also noted that much of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving most people in Gaza displaced and with limited access to basic necessities.
"The third part of this is the speed at which it has happened," the economist added. "The other thing which is extremely troubling in this crisis and what makes it unprecedented is what is going to come next."
Husain stressed that "we are one step away from a disease outbreak," pointing to overcrowded shelters, showers, and toilets as well as people with weakened immune systems due to limited food, water, and medicine.
Children in Gaza are already dying of starvation. As Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, one 46-year-old parent of five told the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor that their children "have been starving for more than a month, and we do not have any flour."
"We eat a small amount of rice each day, so when I learned that flour aid was available, I walked for 13 kilometers before the Israeli army opened their machine gun fire," said the parent, who requested anonymity for safety reasons. "We were hit by shells fired, resulting in several casualties. I managed to survive, without receiving any flour."
U.S. President Joe Biden has faced intense scrutiny for the United States' support of Israel as it wages war on Gaza. While Biden has called out Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of the enclave, he has also requested a $14.3 billion package on top of the $3.8 billion that Israel gets in annual U.S. military aid and bypassed Congress to arm Israeli troops.
While Sanders—who is Jewish but not religious and briefly lived in Israel decades ago—has been criticized by progressives for not demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, he has spoken out against right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. support for the devastating war.
In response to the Israeli prime minister's recent rejection of a two-state solution, Sanders declared Saturday that "despite the illegal and inhumane actions of Netanyahu's government, President Biden has thus far offered unconditional support to Israel. That must change. President Biden must now loudly and clearly say NO to the policies of Netanyahu's right-wing extremist government."
"And Congress must act. There must be no more U.S. military aid to Israel to continue Netanyahu's war," the senator added. "Humanitarian aid must be immediately allowed to reach those in need. A safe release of all remaining hostages must be negotiated. Israel must work towards a lasting peace that allows two states for two peoples. If Netanyahu continues down the path of military domination, he must do so alone. The United States cannot be complicit."
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Israeli Assault Causing Disease, Hunger to Rapidly Spread Across Gaza
"I've been to pretty much any conflict," the World Food Program's chief economist said. "And I have never seen anything like this, both in terms of its scale, its magnitude, but also at the pace that this has unfolded."
Jan 02, 2024
With roughly 90% of Gaza residents displaced and seeking safety from Israel's bombardment and ground attacks, crowding into shelters in cities including the already densely populated Rafah, humanitarian agencies warned Tuesday that the spread of disease and the risk of starvation are showing no signs of slowing down in the blockaded enclave.
A week after the World Food Program (WFP) warned that about "half of Gaza's population is starving," the United Nations organization's chief economist said Tuesday that less than three months into Israel's relentless assault, the territory appears to meet at least one of the criteria for famine.
About 20% of the population faces an "extreme lack of food," Arif Husain told The New York Times.
"I've been to pretty much any conflict, whether Yemen, whether it was South Sudan, northeast Nigeria, Ethiopia, you name it," Husain told the newspaper. "And I have never seen anything like this, both in terms of its scale, its magnitude, but also at the pace that this has unfolded."
Skipping meals, particularly among adults caring for children, has become "the norm" in Gaza, the WFP said on social media.
Experts on Gaza's humanitarian crises—which gripped the enclave even before Israel began bombing Gaza in retaliation for Hamas' attack in October—are among those suffering, the Times reported, with International Crisis Group analyst Azmi Keshawi telling the newspaper that he is one of thousands of displaced people who has to go searching daily for sustenance to feed his family.
"Our daily nightmare is to go hunt for food," Keshawi, who is sheltering with his family in a tent on a street in Rafah, told the Times. "You cannot find flour. You cannot find yeast to make bread. You cannot find any kind of food—tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, eggplant, lemon, orange juice."
Human Rights Watch said last month that Israel is using starvation as a method of warfare—a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The lack of nourishment has put residents at heightened health and safety risks as many are sleeping out in the open without adequate clothing or blankets to keep out the elements, as colder winter weather arrives.
Along with the growing hunger crisis, the United Nations has been monitoring the spread of communicable diseases and healthcare workers' inability to adequately care for people due to Israel's blockade and refusal to allow in adequate aid.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that there have been 179,000 cases of acute respiratory infections; 136,400 cases of diarrhea—the second-leading cause of death among young children worldwide—in children under age five; and 55,400 cases of scabies since mid-October.
The organization said Gaza is at "imminent risk" of more disease outbreaks.
The severe overcrowding of cities and shelters, where displaced people have the use of one toilet for every 700 people on average, has contributed to the rapid spread of illnesses.
"Gazans can die very easily now because of the diseases spreading," Tamara Alrifai, director of external relations at the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom on Tuesday. "Originally a home for around 280,000 people, over the last few weeks, about a million additional people came into Rafah and that explains that visual element of extremely crowded shelters but also extremely crowded spaces around the UNRWA shelters."
Dr. Guillemette Thomas, a medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, told the Times that Israel is now allowing 120 aid trucks at most into Gaza each day. For weeks no shipments were allowed in, and desperately needed fuel did not reach Gaza until late November. Before the bombardment and blockade, many Gazans relied on aid that was brought in by 500 trucks per day.
Despite Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's proclamation on October 9 that he was ordering a "complete siege on the Gaza Strip" with "no electricity, no food, no fuel" allowed in for its residents, who he referred to as "human animals," Israel continues to claim that it is not blocking aid or targeting civilians. The government has claimed Hamas is diverting aid deliveries, an accusation that UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini called "baseless."
At least 22,185 people have been killed and at least 57,000 have been injured in Gaza since Israel began its bombardment, with an additional 7,000 people reported missing or presumed to be buried under rubble.
Last week, the UNRWA posted a video on social media showing people desperately trying to reach an aid convoy in Gaza City.
"Gaza is just weeks away from famine," said the agency. "People are desperate and hungry. To prevent famine, more, much more food and other basics must be allowed in."
The group also reiterated its call for a humanitarian cease-fire to allow aid deliveries and protect civilians.
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