THE GAZA STRIP: A steady stream of miserable children and worried parents poured into the dermatology office at Nasser Hospital in central Gaza.
A toddler with a blue hair bow sobbed as her mother showed how the red and white spots covering her face have spread to her neck and chest.
Another woman lifted her little boy's clothes to reveal the rashes on his back, bottom, thighs and stomach. On his wrists he had open wounds from scratches. A father placed his daughter on the desk so the doctor could examine the lesions on her calves.
Skin diseases are rampant in Gaza, health officials say. The reason, they say, is the appalling conditions in overcrowded tent camps where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been driven from their homes, along with the summer heat and the collapse of sanitation that has left pools of open sewage amid 10 months of Israeli bombardment and offensives. on the territory.
Doctors are dealing with more than 103,000 cases of lice and scabies and 65,000 cases of skin rashes, according to the World Health Organization.
In Gaza's population of about 2.3 million, more than 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections have been recorded since the war began, 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.
Cleanliness is impossible in the dilapidated tents, basically wooden frames hung with blankets or plastic sheeting, crammed side by side over wide stretches, Palestinians say.
“There is no shampoo, no soap,” said Munira Al-Nahhal, who lives in a tent in the dunes outside the southern town of Khan Younis. “The water is dirty. It's all sand and bugs and garbage.”
Her family's tent was packed with her grandchildren, many of whom had rashes. A little boy stood and scratched the red spots on his stomach. “One child gets it, and it spreads to all of them,” Al-Nahhal said.
Palestinians in the camp said clean water was almost impossible to get. Some wash their children in salt water from the nearby Mediterranean Sea. People have to wear the same clothes day after day until they can wash them, then they immediately wear them again. Flies are everywhere. Children play in garbage-strewn sand.
“First it was spots on her face. Then it spread to her stomach and arms, all over her forehead. And it hurts. It itches. And there's no treatment. Or if there is, we can't afford it,” said Shaima Marshoud, who sat next to his young daughter in a cinder block structure they had settled in among the tents.
More than 1.8 million of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes. The vast majority are now crammed into a 50 square kilometer area of sand dunes and farming on the coast with almost no sewage system and little water.
The distribution of humanitarian supplies, including soap, shampoo and medicine, has slowed to a trickle, UN officials say, as Israeli military operations and general lawlessness in Gaza make it too dangerous for aid trucks to move.
“The solid waste management system has collapsed,” said Chitose Noguchi, deputy special representative of the United Nations Development Programme.
The UNDP said Gaza's two pre-war landfills were inaccessible during the fighting and it had set up 10 temporary sites. But Noguchi said there were more than 140 informal dumping sites that have emerged. Some of them are giant pools of human waste and garbage.
