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    • Lice, scabies, rashes plague Palestinian children as skin disease runs rampant in Gaza's tent camps

    Displaced child Sham al-Hessi, centre, who suffers from skin disease, is covered with skin cream as she poses for a picture, at a makeshift tent camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Monday, July 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana ) Displaced child Sham al-Hessi, centre, who suffers from skin disease, is covered with skin cream as she poses for a picture, at a makeshift tent camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Monday, July 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana )
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    KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip -

    A steady stream of miserable children and worried parents flowed 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鈥檚 clothes to reveal the rashes on his back, butt, thighs and stomach. On his wrists, he had open sores from scratching. A father stood his daughter on the desk so the doctor could examine the lesions on her calves.

    Skin diseases are running rampant in Gaza, health officials say. The cause, they say, is the appalling conditions in overcrowded tent camps housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians 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 Israel鈥檚 bombardment and offensives in the territory.

    Doctors are wrestling 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鈥檚 population of some 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 of acute diarrhea and more than 100,000 cases of jaundice, according to the United Nations Development Program.

    Cleanliness is impossible in the ramshackle tents, basically wood frames hung with blankets or plastic sheets, crammed side by side over wide stretches, Palestinians say.

    鈥淭here鈥檚 no shampoo, no soap,鈥 said Munira al-Nahhal, living in a tent in the dunes outside the southern city of Khan Younis. 鈥淭he water is dirty. Everything is sand and insects and garbage.鈥

    Her family鈥檚 tent was crammed with her grandchildren, many of whom had rashes. One little boy stood scratching the red patches on his belly. 鈥淥ne child gets it, and it spreads to all of them,鈥 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. People have to wear the same clothes day after day until they鈥檙e able to wash them, then they wear them again immediately. Flies are everywhere. Children play in garbage-strewn sand.

    鈥淔irst 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鈥檚 no treatment. Or if there is we can鈥檛 afford it,鈥 said Shaima Marshoud, sitting next to her little daughter in a cinder block structure they鈥檇 settled in among the tents.

    More than 1.8 million of Gaza鈥檚 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, often moving multiple times over the past months to get away from Israeli ground assaults or bombardment. The vast majority are now crowded into a 50-square-kilometre (20-square-mile) area of dunes and fields on the coast with almost no sewage system and little water.

    The distribution of humanitarian supplies, including soap, shampoo and medicines, has slowed to a trickle, UN officials say, because Israeli military operations and general lawlessness in Gaza make it too dangerous for relief trucks to move.

    Israel launched its campaign vowing to destroy Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted. Israel鈥檚 assault has killed more than 39,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.

    鈥淭he solid waste management system has collapsed,鈥 said Chitose Noguchi, the deputy special representative of the UN Development Program鈥檚 Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People.

    In a report released Tuesday, the UNDP said Gaza鈥檚 two pre-war landfills were unreachable amid the fighting and it had set up 10 temporary sites. But Noguchi said there were more than 140 informal dumping sites that have cropped up. Some of them are giant pools of human waste and garbage.

    鈥淧eople are having tents and living next to dumping sites, which is really, really critical situation in terms of the health crisis,鈥 Noguchi said.

    Nassim Basala, a dermatologist at Nasser Hospital, said they get 300 to 500 people a day coming in with skin diseases. After the most recent Israeli evacuation orders, more people have crowded into agricultural fields outside the city of Khan Younis, where insects are rife in the summer.

    Scabies and lice are at epidemic proportions, he said, but other fungal, bacterial and viral infections and parasites are also running wild.

    With the flood of patients, even simple cases can because dangerous.

    For example, Basala said, impetigo is a simple bacterial infection treatable with creams. But sometimes by the time the patient gets to a doctor, 鈥渢he bacteria have spread and affected the kidneys,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had cases of kidney failure鈥 as a result. Scratched rashes get infected in the pervasive dirt.

    He said creams and ointments were in short supply at the hospital.

    Children are the most affected. But adults suffer as well. At the hospital鈥檚 dermatology office, one man untied his dirt-covered shoes to show the painful looking sores on the tops of his feet and ankles where his rash had rubbed open. A woman held up her hands, chapped raw and red.

    Mohammed al-Rayan, several of whose children in a tent outside Khan Younis, have rashes or spot, said he has taken them to doctors.

    鈥淭hey give us creams, but it鈥檚 no use when you don鈥檛 have anything to wash with,鈥 he said. 鈥淵ou put a cream and it gets better but then the next day it鈥檚 back the same.鈥

    Parents are left struggling to comfort children with painful conditions that won鈥檛 go away.

    Manar al-Hessi鈥檚 toddler cried as she spread cream on her forehead and chest, covered in scabs, sores and spots.

    鈥淚t鈥檚 horrible,鈥 al-Hessi said. 鈥淭here are always flies on her face. She goes in the toilet or the garbage, and it gets in her hands. The filth is huge.鈥

    ___

    Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. AP correspondent Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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