Hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) have held a rally in the Gaza Strip against a decision by the UN body to cut its services in the besieged territory.
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UNRWA said in a situation report that its medical personnel provided 211 consultations over the course of Tuesday in Yalda, including confirming six cases of typhoid. The blockade, which has cut off the territory from the outside world, has led to economic and humanitarian crises in the densely-populated enclave.
It has come under bombardment from government forces since 2012, but conditions worsened in April when Islamic State (IS) militants attacked. “We can now confirm a typhoid outbreak among this U.N.-assisted population with at least six confirmed cases”.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, typhoid is a life-threatening illness caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi which is spread by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water.
Symptoms include nausea, fever and abdominal pain.
“Our concern is that these typhoid cases only represent the tip of the iceberg, because the erosion of health services and appalling public health standards create a massive, massive risk of diseases breaking out”, Unrwa spokesman Chris Gunness told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In a speech at the protest, Suhail Hindi, the chairman of the union of Arab employees at the UNRWA in Gaza, said the agency’s “decision to reduce its services to Palestinian refugees is unacceptable” and that its impact would be “catastrophic” for young Palestinians.
In September 2014, about 15 Palestinian migrants attempting to flee the besieged and war-torn Gaza Strip died after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of northern Egypt.
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UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl said in June that before the Syrian war began in 2011 there were 160,000 Palestinians in the Yarmouk camp, many of whom held jobs.
