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'We Cannot Allow This to Happen Again': Israeli War on Lebanon Sparks Cholera Resurgence
"We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives," said Save the Children's Lebanon director.
Oct 23, 2024
Israel's invasion and intense bombardment of Lebanon—including recent attacks on hospitals and other medical infrastructure—have sparked a potentially catastrophic health crisis in the country, with cholera and other diseases spreading among the more than a million people who have been displaced over the past month.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it was working to stem the spread of cholera after Lebanon's health ministry confirmed the country's first known case of the bacterial disease since a deadly outbreak that began in October 2022.
Particularly vulnerable to the worsening public health crisis are the hundreds of thousands of children who have been displaced by Israel's bombing and ground attacks. The United Nations Children's Fund stressed that cholera is a severe threat to kids under the age of 5, the unvaccinated, and those suffering from malnutrition.
The humanitarian group Save the Children said Tuesday that "over 400,000 children forced from their homes by the escalating conflict in Lebanon are at risk of skin diseases, cholera, and other waterborne diseases due to overcrowded, basic conditions in collective shelters and a lack of water and sanitation facilities."
Kamal Nasser El Deen, Save the Children Lebanon's emergency response coordinator, said Wednesday that he has been in "multiple" shelters in which families were forced to wait in long lines to access bathrooms.
"The facilities are inadequate for the number of people, and to make matters worse, the water supply is inconsistent," he continued. "This lack of clean, reliable water creates a significant risk for waterborne diseases. It's heartbreaking to know that these children, already displaced and vulnerable, face the additional threat of illness simply because basic needs like sanitation and clean water aren't being met."
"The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children's country director in Lebanon, likened the intensifying health crisis to the dire conditions in Gaza, which the U.S.-armed Israeli military has decimated with more than a year of relentless bombings and ground attacks, obliterating the enclave's healthcare system and causing the reemergence of polio. Experts have also warned of a looming cholera outbreak in Gaza.
"Thousands of vulnerable children are now unprotected and with winter just round the corner and temperatures dropping, they will become even more susceptible to diseases such as measles, meningitis, and hepatitis A," Moorehead said of the Lebanon crisis. "We have already seen in Gaza how the lethal combination of mass displacement, attacks on healthcare, and lack of nutritious food and water can impact children's lives. We cannot allow this to happen again. The international community must act now to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and exert pressure for an immediate cease-fire."
Save the Children's warning came as rescue teams searched the rubble for survivors in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that hit across the street from Beirut's main public hospital earlier this week, killing at least 18 people including four children.
"Hussein al-Ali, a nurse who was there when the attack happened, said it took him a few minutes to realize it was not the hospital that was hit. Dust and smoke covered the hospital lobby," The Associated Pressreported Tuesday. "The glass in the dialysis unit, the pharmacy, and other rooms in the hospital was shattered. The false roof fell over his and his colleagues' heads."
Some hospitals and clinics operated by humanitarian groups have been forced to shut down due to Israel's military campaign. The New York Timesnoted that facilities that have not been damaged by Israeli bombings "have been abandoned after staff fled, fearing for their safety."
"The ones that remain operational say they are quickly running out of beds as patients evacuated from other facilities are brought in," the newspaper added.
The WHO said last week that it had verified nearly two dozen attacks on healthcare in Lebanon since mid-September. Those attacks killed at least 72 patients and healthcare workers, according to the U.N. body.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Tuesday that he was "appalled" by Israel's strike near Beirut's public hospital.
"Hospitals, ambulances, and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law because of their lifesaving function for the wounded and the sick," said Türk. "When conducting military operations in the vicinity of hospitals, parties to the conflict must assess the expected impact on healthcare services in relation to the principles of proportionality and precautions. Any incidents which affect hospitals must be subjected to a prompt and thorough investigation."
"I repeat the U.N.'s call for an immediate cessation to hostilities," he added, "and remind all parties that the protection of civilians must be the absolute top priority."
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'Horrific': Israeli Escalation Would Kill Another 85,000 Gazans in 6 Months, Study Shows
"Even in the best-case cease-fire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur," said the authors of a new report.
Feb 22, 2024
In an effort to put "at the front of people's minds and on the desks of decision-makers" the human cost of the U.S.-backed Israeli onslaught in Gaza, scientists on Wednesday said an escalation in the bombardment was projected to kill 85,000 Palestinians in the next six months—which would bring the total death toll to more than 114,000 people, or about 5% of Gaza's population, in less than a year.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine completed modeling for a report titled Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-Based Health Impact Projections, estimating the projected "excess deaths"—those above what would be been expected before the war—based on the health data available in Gaza before Israel began its air and ground attacks in October and the data that's been collected in more than four months of fighting.
The potential deaths of 85,000 additional people in the next six months represents the worst of three possible scenarios modeled by the researchers.
If bombing, shelling, and other ground attacks continue at their current pace, the scientists projected the killings of 58,260 Palestinians over the next six months.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, considers deaths from traumatic injuries as well as infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal health crises, and diseases for which patients have lost access to treatment, such as kidney disease or cancer. With 1 in 4 households in Gaza now facing "catastrophic" levels of hunger, according to the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Phase Classification, "nutritional status" was named as a risk factor in the study, but the researchers did not include starvation as a potential cause of excess deaths.
In the case of an outbreak of an infectious disease such as cholera—which public health experts have warned could happen due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid and a lack of potable water—66,720 people could die if the current level of violence continues.
"Even in the best-case cease-fire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur, mainly due to the time it would take to improve water, sanitation, and shelter conditions, reduce malnutrition, and restore functioning healthcare services in Gaza," the study reads.
If an immediate cease-fire were established, the researchers projected at least 6,500 additional deaths, as people would be expected to die of previous injuries or be killed by unexploded ordnance. The deaths of babies and women would also still be expected during and soon after childbirth, as complex care has become unavailable for many due to the collapse of the healthcare system, and undernourished children could die because of their reduced ability to fight off infections like pneumonia.
If a cease-fire began but an outbreak of a disease such as cholera, polio, or meningitis occurred, the scientists projected 11,580 people would die in Gaza between now and August.
Negotiations for a potential truce were underway on Thursday in Israel, where a U.S. envoy arrived as Israeli forces continued to bomb Rafah. About 1.5 million people are currently in the city in southern Gaza, with most having fled Israeli attacks on other cities.
"The decisions that are going to be taken over the next few days and weeks matter hugely in terms of the evolution of the death toll in Gaza," Francesco Checchi, professor of epidemiology and international health at LSHTM, toldThe New York Times Wednesday.
Despite the U.S. and Israeli governments' persistent claims that the Israel Defense Forces are seeking to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for an attack on southern Israel that it led in October, the United Nations has estimated that about 40% of the people killed in Gaza have been children. This trend would continue, according to the researchers, who projected that 42% of the Palestinians killed in the next six months would be under the age of 19.
Journalist Séamus Malekafzali called the scientists' projections "nothing short of horrific."
Checchi told the Times that the researchers wanted to put the projections "at the front of people's minds and on the desks of decision-makers, so that it can be said afterward that when these decisions were taken, there was some available evidence on how this would play out in terms of lives."
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World Food Program Economist Warns 'Worst Is Yet to Come' in Gaza
The U.N. organization's chief economist spoke with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders about the "unprecedented" crisis conditions in Gaza as Israel continues to wage war on the besieged enclave.
Jan 23, 2024
Nearly four months into Israel's blockade and bombardment that has killed about 25,500 people in the Gaza Strip, the World Food Program's chief economist warned Tuesday that the "worst is yet to come" in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
That warning from the WFP's Arif Husain came in a livestreamed conversation with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
"In my opinion, this crisis is unprecedented," Husain said. "Three things... make this unprecedented. One is the scale."
The vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are facing crisis-level hunger, as the WFP and other United Nations organizations have highlighted throughout the war, which Israel launched on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
"The second part is severity," Husain explained, with "half a million people literally starving." He also noted that much of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving most people in Gaza displaced and with limited access to basic necessities.
"The third part of this is the speed at which it has happened," the economist added. "The other thing which is extremely troubling in this crisis and what makes it unprecedented is what is going to come next."
Husain stressed that "we are one step away from a disease outbreak," pointing to overcrowded shelters, showers, and toilets as well as people with weakened immune systems due to limited food, water, and medicine.
Children in Gaza are already dying of starvation. As Common Dreamsreported earlier Tuesday, one 46-year-old parent of five told the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor that their children "have been starving for more than a month, and we do not have any flour."
"We eat a small amount of rice each day, so when I learned that flour aid was available, I walked for 13 kilometers before the Israeli army opened their machine gun fire," said the parent, who requested anonymity for safety reasons. "We were hit by shells fired, resulting in several casualties. I managed to survive, without receiving any flour."
U.S. President Joe Biden has faced intense scrutiny for the United States' support of Israel as it wages war on Gaza. While Biden has called out Israel's "indiscriminate bombing" of the enclave, he has also requested a $14.3 billion package on top of the $3.8 billion that Israel gets in annual U.S. military aid and bypassed Congress to arm Israeli troops.
While Sanders—who is Jewish but not religious and briefly lived in Israel decades ago—has been criticized by progressives for not demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, he has spoken out against right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. support for the devastating war.
In response to the Israeli prime minister's recent rejection of a two-state solution, Sanders declared Saturday that "despite the illegal and inhumane actions of Netanyahu's government, President Biden has thus far offered unconditional support to Israel. That must change. President Biden must now loudly and clearly say NO to the policies of Netanyahu's right-wing extremist government."
"And Congress must act. There must be no more U.S. military aid to Israel to continue Netanyahu's war," the senator added. "Humanitarian aid must be immediately allowed to reach those in need. A safe release of all remaining hostages must be negotiated. Israel must work towards a lasting peace that allows two states for two peoples. If Netanyahu continues down the path of military domination, he must do so alone. The United States cannot be complicit."
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