Alarmingly high rates of diarrhoea and hepatitis A in Rafah: Unrwa

The Gaza chief of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), Thomas White, has sounded the alarm over the high rates of diarrhoea, which can be deadly if there is not enough clean water, in addition to outbreaks of hepatitis A in Rafah. 

"These are the result of a million people jammed into a pretty small area without access to sanitation," White said, adding that the conditions in Rafah were grim.

"Hundreds of thousands of people are digging a hole in the sand adjacent to where they’re living, and that’s where they are defecating," he said.

"As an Israeli invasion of Rafah becomes imminent, White warned of “the reality of having a million people move in the Gaza Strip into areas that are not set up to accommodate them".

“Many of them will have to leave the shelters they have constructed here [in Rafah], White said. "We will have hundreds of thousands of people living in the open again."