When girls complain to Gaza pediatrician Lobna al-Azaiza that they don’t have combs, she tells them to cut their hair.
It’s not just combs. Israel’s blockade of a region ravaged by 10 months of war means there is little or no shampoo, soap, menstrual products or household cleaning supplies.
Waste collection and sewage treatment have also collapsed, and it is easy to see why infectious diseases fostered by overcrowding and lack of hygiene – such as scabies or fungal infections – are on the rise.
“The most common disease we have seen in the recent past is skin rashes, skin diseases, which have multiple causes, including overcrowding in the camps, increasing heat inside the tents, sweating in children and lack of adequate water for bathing,” the doctor said.
Azaiza worked at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya until Israeli tanks separated the northern part of the besieged area from the south.
Like most doctors in Gaza, she has adapted and continues to treat patients. She goes to work past her home, which was destroyed by Israeli attacks.
The tent clinic he set up with a small team began by treating children but has now become a clinic for entire families, most of whom, like most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, have also been ordered out of their homes or have been bombed.
Even the medicines that are available are often expensive; a tube of simple ointment for burns now costs 200 shekels ($53).
International aid supplies have dropped dramatically since Israel took control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.
Israel has denied responsibility for the delay in the arrival of urgent humanitarian aid, saying the United Nations and other organisations are responsible for its distribution inside the enclave.
Azaiza has no doubts about where the immediate solution lies:
“The cross-border route must be opened so that we can bring in medicines, because most of the medicines currently available are ineffective: zero effect, no impact on the skin diseases that we see.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
