KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip – A steady stream of miserable children and worried parents arrived at the dermatology office at Nasser Hospital in central Gaza.
A child with a blue hair bow sobbed as her mother showed how the red and white spots covering her face had spread to her neck and chest. Another woman lifted her son’s clothes and revealed rashes on his back, buttocks, thighs and stomach. On his wrists, he had open wounds from scratching. A father placed his daughter on the table so the doctor could examine injuries to her calves.
Skin diseases are rampant in Gaza, health officials say. The cause, they say, is appalling conditions in the overcrowded camps that house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes, along with the summer heat and the collapse of sanitation that has open sewage left pools in the midst of 10 months in Israel bombings and offensives in the territory.
Doctors are dealing with more than 103,000 cases of lice and scabies and 65,000 cases of rashes, according to the World Health Organization. In Gaza’s population of around 2.3 million, more than 1 million cases have been recorded. cases of acute respiratory infections since the start of the war, along with more than half a million cases of acute diarrhea and more than 100,000 cases of jaundice, according to the United Nations Development Program. .
Cleaning is impossible in the dilapidated tents, essentially wooden structures covered with blankets or plastic sheets, packed side by side in large expanses, Palestinians say.
“There is no shampoo or soap,” said Munira al-Nahhal, who lives in a tent in the dunes near the town of Khan Younis in the south of the country. “The water is dirty. Everything is sand, bugs and trash.”
His family’s tent was packed with grandchildren, many of whom had rashes. A little boy was scratching the red spots on his belly. “One child contracts the disease and the disease spreads to all of them,” said al-Nahhal.
Palestinians in the camp said it was almost impossible to obtain clean water. Some wash their children in salt water from the neighboring Mediterranean. People have to wear the same clothes day after day until they can wash them and then wear them again immediately. Flies are everywhere. Children play in the sand covered in rubbish.
“First there were spots on her face. Then it spread over her belly and arms, all over her forehead. And that hurts. Coke. And there is no treatment. Or, if there is, we don’t have the money for it,” said Shaima Marshoud, sitting next to her young daughter in a concrete block structure where they have set up shop between the tents.
More than 1.8 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been forced from their homes, often moving several times over the past few months to escape Israeli ground attacks or bombardment. The vast majority are now clustered in a 50-square-kilometer (20-square-mile) area of dunes and fields on the coast, with almost no sewage system and little water.
The distribution of humanitarian goods, including soaps, shampoos and medicines, has slowed, UN officials say, because Israeli military operations and general lawlessness in Gaza make the movement of humanitarian aid trucks too dangerous.
Israel launched its campaign promising to destroy Hamas following the October 7 attack on southern Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 350 kidnapped. Israel’s attack killed more than 39,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
“The solid waste management system has collapsed,” said Chitose Noguchi, deputy special representative of the United Nations Development Program’s Palestinian People’s Assistance Program.
In a report released Tuesday, the UNDP said Gaza’s two pre-war landfills were inaccessible during the fighting and that it had created 10 temporary sites. But Noguchi said more than 140 informal dumping sites have emerged. Some of them are gigantic pools of human waste and trash.
“People are setting up tents and living near dump sites, which is a very, very critical situation in terms of the health crisis,” Noguchi said.
Nassim Basala, a dermatologist at Nasser Hospital, said they receive 300 to 500 people a day with skin diseases. After the latest Israeli evacuation ordersMore people crowded into agricultural fields on the outskirts of the city of Khan Younis, where insects abound in summer.
Scabies and lice are at epidemic proportions, he said, but other fungal, bacterial and viral infections and parasites are also on the loose.
With the flood of patients, even simple cases can be dangerous.
For example, Basala said, impetigo is a simple bacterial infection treatable with creams. But sometimes by the time a patient gets to the doctor, “the bacteria have already spread and affected the kidneys,” he said. “We had cases of kidney failure” as a result. Scratched rashes fester in widespread dirt.
He said creams and ointments were scarce in the hospital.
Children are the most affected. But adults suffer too. In the hospital’s dermatology office, a man untied his dirt-covered shoes to show the painful sores on the tops of his feet and ankles where the rash had broken out. A woman raised her hands, cracked and red.
Mohammed al-Rayan, whose children in a tent on the outskirts of Khan Younis have rashes or patches, said he took them to doctors.
“They give us creams, but it’s no use when we have nothing to wash,” he said. “You put a cream on it and it gets better, but the next day it comes back the same.”
Parents are left struggling to comfort their children with painful conditions that won’t go away.
The child from Manar al-Hessi cried as he spread cream on his forehead and chest, which was covered in scabs, sores and spots.
“It’s horrible,” said al-Hessi. “There are always flies on her face. She goes to the bathroom or the trash and it falls into her hands. The dirt is enormous.”
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Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. AP correspondent Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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