The World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday it had carried out a rare evacuation of 97 people, around half of them children, from Gaza to the UAE for medical treatment, and urged the resumption of regular such transfers.
The Israel-Hamas conflict has decimated Gaza’s health system and only 17 out of 36 hospitals are currently partially functioning, the WHO estimates. The main Rafah crossing for medical transfers out of Gaza to Egypt has been shut since May when Israel ramped up its military campaign in southern Gaza.
“This was the largest evacuation yet from Gaza since October 2023,” Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory told reporters of the operation, which took place on Wednesday.
The patients included people suffering from cancer, blood and kidney diseases and trauma, he said.
They were evacuated by road and then by air from Israel’s Ramon airport.
“Gaza needs medical corridors. We need a better organised and sustained system,” he said, adding that more than 10,000 Gazans were awaiting transfer.
Peeperkorn also said that more than 500,000 children in Gaza had now been vaccinated in the first phase of a polio campaign set to end in northern Gaza yesterday. The first case of the disease in Gaza in 25 years emerged last month.
The WHO said at least one quarter, or 22,500, of those Palestinians injured in the Gaza conflict had suffered life-changing injuries such as missing limbs that would require rehabilitation services for years to come.
l Gaza’s economy has shrunk to less than a sixth of its size when the Israel-Hamas war began nearly a year ago, while unemployment in the occupied West Bank has nearly tripled, a UN report said yesterday, underscoring the challenges of reconstruction.
The report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) described Gaza’s economy as “in ruins”.
“The Palestinian economy is in freefall,” UNCTAD deputy secretary general Pedro Manuel Moreno told reporters in Geneva.
“The report calls for the international community to halt this economic freefall, address the humanitarian crisis, and lay the groundwork for lasting peace and development,” he said, calling for a comprehensive recovery plan.
&uuid=(email))