Deadly diseases are now ripping through Gaza even as millions of dollars’ worth of humanitarian aid piles up in warehouses across the region, says Oxfam.
Water-borne diseases that are both preventable and readily treatable have increased by almost 150% inside Gaza over the past three months as Israel continues to deliberately block aid.
Available multi-agency health data shows that the numbers of Palestinians presenting to health facilities with acute watery diarrhea have increased by 150 per cent, bloody diarrhea by 302 per cent, and acute jaundice cases by 101 per cent.
Even these figures will be grossly under-reported because most of the two million people trapped by Israel’s continuing siege have little access to the few healthcare facilities that have managed to keep operating.
This surge of disease can quickly turn deadly especially as Palestinians living in Gaza have been deprived of enough food, water, shelter, and adequate healthcare for over 21 months. Their community and family networks have been shattered, and people made more vulnerable by repeated forced mass displacements and continuing violence.
Israel has put Gaza under a near total blockade since March 2 of this year stopping all but a trickle of aid. There are no longer any humanitarian aid reserves held by international agencies inside of Gaza.
As a result, international humanitarian donors and agencies have been forced to accumulate more than 420,000 pallets of aid that now sit in limbo inside warehouses across the regions. This covers an area of around 75 hectares, or enough to cover 101 football fields.
This aid includes shelters, food and supplements to combat malnutrition, and water equipment, sanitation items and medicines that would be vital to tackle diseases and
Oxfam alone has over 110,000 items of humanitarian aid in one warehouse including water bladders and tanks, hygiene, dignity and water testing kits, food parcels, soap, nappies, pipes and latrine slabs.
Oxfam is waiting for clearances and permissions to enter, however the Israeli authorities have recently denied water and sanitation items and food parcels.
Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel policy lead, said that time is running out to prevent an epidemic across Gaza and the mass death that would inevitably result.
“The conditions that Palestinians in Gaza are being forced to endure have created a petri dish for disease. These are diseases that thrive where people lack water – clean or otherwise – and are stuck in over-crowded unsanitary environments with almost no food,” Khalidi said.
“There is a grim and deliberate inevitability as to what Israel has created in Gaza. Each day that its siege continues and it denies aid, starvation becomes increasingly widespread and human deaths from entirely preventable diseases becomes an absolute certainty.”
“As Gaza bakes in the summer sun and the hottest month of the year looms, it is increasingly urgent that Israel’s siege must end. It is shameful Israel has been allowed to besiege Gaza and create this catastrophe. Nothing other than complete access to Gaza to deliver aid at scale can alleviate the conditions that people have been forced to live in.”
“Each day we wait for a ceasefire, more lives are lost through violence, hunger and disease. Palestinians in Gaza cannot wait a day longer for this hell to end. There must be a full and complete ceasefire, and all required aid must be able to enter via all crossings into Gaza so that Palestinians can finally begin to recover and rebuild.”
For interviews, contact Lucy Brown on 0478 190 099 / [email protected]
Notes to editors
- Health data is drawn from Gaza health cluster data epidemiology on WASH related disease trends March-June 2025
- Calculation of aid pallets based on Palestine logistics cluster data
- Oxfam has aid waiting for clearance in warehouses in Jordan and in Egypt.
