Overcrowded hospitals and aid that makes it difficult to reach everyone. This is the situation described by Lucia Elmispecial representative Unicef for the Palestinein a series of videos shared by Ansa.
In a first clip Elmi speaks from the hospital Emarati of Rafah and specifies: “It has become the main maternal and neonatal hospital for the majority of the displaced population in Rafah. The capacity has become very limited, it is overcrowded. There are mothers and children everywhere, in the last month alone the hospital has supported 500 births.” The special representative, who was on a mission in the Gaza Strip for a week, also said that she had brought “600 thousand doses of vaccines for polio, tuberculosis, tetanus since vaccinations had been interrupted for three months” and that ” with the support of WHO and UNRWA, we will be able to reach every child in the Gaza Strip.”
Elmi also went to the Rafah crossing where aid arrives: “Life-saving supplies, such as ready-to-use therapeutic foods for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition and for the prevention of malnutrition, are critical to ensuring that children who have endured dire situations over the past three months have access to help. These supplies must be distributed with partners and reach families and children in the IDP community. There are more than 1.9 million displaced people and half of them are children.”
Unicef’s request is simple: to be able to reach children without problems. “What we need right now as Unicef, as a humanitarian actor, is a safe, regular, predictable and unobstructed access to all children in the Strip who need essential life-saving aid,” concludes Elmi.