UNICEF Warns of Gaza Child Deaths Due to Water Scarcity

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United Nations: With UN Security Council members still unable to agree on a ceasefire resolution, mainly over US objections, the head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that without safe water, “many more children” in war-battered Gaza will soon die from the disease.

“Access to sufficient amounts of clean water is a matter of life and death. Children in Gaza have barely a drop to drink,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell warned in a statement on Wednesday.

“Children and their families are having to use water from unsafe sources that are highly salinated or polluted. Without safe water, many more children will die from deprivation and disease in the coming days.”

The humanitarian alert came after more than 10 weeks of Israel’s near-constant bombardment of the enclave, which has resulted in the killing of 20,000 Palestinians and injuries to over 50,000.

In a bid to escape the bombing, which has heavily impacted the Strip’s water production, treatment, and distribution networks, more than 1.4 million uprooted Gazans have sought shelter in or near facilities run by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA.

But UNICEF said that recently displaced children in southern Rafah governorate have only 1.5 to two litres of water every day and that water services were “at the point of collapse.”

“For survival alone, the estimated minimum is three litres per day,” the UN agency said in a statement.

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Alarming as the lack of drinking water is, “hundreds of thousands” of displaced people—half of them children—also remain “in desperate need” of food, shelter, medicines, and protection, UNICEF stressed.

At least 50 percent of WASH facilities, which provide basic water and sanitation services, have been damaged or destroyed in Gaza, as UNICEF warned that the impact of this situation on children was particularly worrying because they are more susceptible to diarrhoea, disease, and malnutrition.

“Already, officials have recorded almost 20 times the monthly average of reported cases of diarrhoea among children under the age of five, in addition to increases in cases of scabies, lice, chicken pox, skin rashes, and more than 160,000 cases of acute respiratory infection,” UNICEF reported.

Since the start of the crisis, UNICEF and partners have provided fuel to operate wells, desalination plants, water trucking, waste, and sewage management, along with bottled water and water containers for more than 1.3 million people.

More than 45,000 jerry cans have been distributed, along with at least 130,000 family hygiene kits, including menstrual health and hygiene products and hundreds of thousands of bars of soap.

The UN agency underlined the need for generators to operate water and sanitation facilities, along with plastic pipes to fix broken plumbing. But these continue to be blocked from entering Gaza owing to “access restrictions”.

“Constant bombing and restrictions on materials and fuel are preventing critical progress,” UNICEF’s Russell insisted in a tweet. The latest humanitarian alert came amid increasing international pressure for a new pause in hostilities in the Gaza Strip to enable more aid supplies to be trucked in for the most vulnerable.

The first pause lasted from November 24 to December 1.  

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini recently warned that desperate people have been “taking the food and eating it right away,” while social media posts have shown groups of people stopping aid convoys and removing supplies.

“Everywhere you look is congested with makeshift shelters. Everywhere you go, people are desperate, hungry, and terrified,” Lazzarini told journalists in Geneva.

Citing the Gazan health authorities, UNRWA said in its latest update on the crisis that more than 19,450 Palestinians have been killed in the hostilities, according to health authorities, and “around 70 percent are reported to be women and children.”