WHO to send one million polio vaccines to Gaza to protect children

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the vaccines will be administered to children in the coming weeks. He noted that no cases of polio have been recorded yet but without immediate action, it was “just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected”. Humanitarians have expressed deep concerns about the impact of a possible polio emergency in Gaza, amid disastrous sanitary conditions marked … Read more

Europe tops the charts for alcohol consumption. WHO calls for urgent action to curb the trend

WHO’s Dr Gauden Galea said that the impacts are far-reaching including domestic violence, accidents and mental health issues. He called on countries to implement effective policies to reduce drinking. How much are Europeans drinking? The numbers tell a sobering story: men in the region drink nearly four times more than women and 470 million people … Read more

UNICEF chief calls for urgent security reset in Gaza amid ‘new horrors’

“Simply put – we do not have the necessary conditions in the Gaza Strip for a robust humanitarian response,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement issued in the wake of an attack on one of the agency’s vehicles and the latest Israeli evacuation order in Khan Younis. Children suffer ‘permanent scars’  Ms. Russell began by highlighting the dire … Read more

Where do I go now, ask Gazans uprooted by new Israeli evacuation orders

In Khan Younis, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) reported witnessing “thousands of people fleeing” westwards as part of the exodus from the enclave’s southern city amid ongoing hostilities, leaving children traumatized and crying uncontrollably. “Elderly people on the back of donkey carts…disabled people being pushed in wheelchairs through the sand with the belongings … Read more