The menstrual cycle for some 700,000 women and girls in Gaza is a “nightmare” and “there are no longer normal births” due to the lack of a health system, sanitation, decent facilities and supplies, a senior UN executive warned this Wednesday.
This was conveyed in the daily press conference at the UN headquarters in New York by the deputy executive director of the Population Fund (UNFPA), Andrew Saberton, after traveling to the enclave last week and verifying the “desperate situation” of Palestinian women and girls.
“I was not prepared for what I saw. The devastation looked like the setting of a dystopian movie. Gaza is devastated, mile after mile of rubble and dust with few buildings intact (…) and this is not collateral damage,” said Saberton, who also visited Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In famine-stricken Gaza, he said some 11,500 pregnant women are malnourished, which affects both mother and baby, and has led to 70% of newborns being premature or low weight, and 33% of pregnancies being high-risk.
Meanwhile, the war in the enclave, which has lasted more than two years, has left 94% of the hospitals destroyed or damaged, and of those still standing, half focus on traumatology; Only 15% have the capacity to provide emergency obstetric care, he said.
“It is common to see between three and five newborns at a time in incubators,” explained Saberton spent a few hours in Gaza and saw a “fraction” of the devastation, but said he completely trusted the “truth” of the stories he learned from Palestinians and UNFPA workers.
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“There are no normal births now in Gaza,” added the executive, who estimated births at around 130 a day and pointed out that many women do not have hospitals available, nor private spaces in the precarious camps where they live, with no other option than to “give birth in the rubble.”
“There has been no supply of menstrual pads in Gaza in months. There are 700,000 women and girls for whom every month the menstrual cycle is a nightmare,” she added, given the lack of privacy, sanitation and clean water, and “the cut-off cloths” that many resort to are “running out.”
Beyond that, he maintained that about 170,000 people have urinary or reproductive tract problems that could be resolved with drugs and medical care, but threaten to become life-threatening problems.
In the West Bank, there were 73,000 pregnant women and denounced that, with the enclave full of barriers and security checkpoints, they are sometimes detained for hours and then denied transportation.
Saberton, who focused on the female population because it is her agency’s responsibility but warned that the situation is desperate for everyone, added that gender violence has skyrocketed “across its entire spectrum,” as in other conflicts, and cited, for example, that there are more child marriages.
The executive assured that Palestinians have a long road to recovery ahead of them and that the impact of the war between Israel and Hamas will affect an entire generation, since 70% of young people suffer from depression and anxiety, and a good part is expected to suffer from post-traumatic stress.
With information from EFE.
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