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UN health agency says 500 to 600 aid trucks a day could reach Gaza once ceasefire begins

Amid media reports that Israel’s Security Cabinet recommended the approval of a Gaza ceasefire on Friday, humanitarian aid agencies prepared to expand the flow of humanitarian aid assistance to Palestinians in the territory, devastated by 15 months of war.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) expressed optimism that between 500 to 600 aid trucks per day could access the Strip, over 10 times more than today. “That would be a huge increase of the 40 to 50 we have seen over the last months,” said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, UN health agency representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The WHO is scaling up its operations, mobilizing critical supplies and resources to address immediate needs and support early recovery efforts. That includes the deployment of “temporary prefabricated clinics and hospitals, that will be integrated into the existing facilities”, Dr. Peeperkorn explained to journalists in Geneva by video from Jerusalem. Those prefabricated health centres will allow medics to “expand needed bed capacity, address urgent health needs and health service delivery”, he added.

Addressing the immense needs and restoring the health system will be complex and challenging, given the scale, complexity of operation and constraints involved. The WHO announced yesterday that at least $10 billion will be required to meet the needs of health system recovery for the next five to seven years, $3 billion of which will be necessary in the first year. An influx of aid could help to bring in medical supplies, much-needed fuel and spare parts for hospital generators, along with parts to rebuild electricity, water, waste management systems and other infrastructures that have been smashed by constant Israeli bombardment.

Only half of Gaza's 36 hospitals are operational and more than 25 per cent of the injured face life-changing injuries. Specialized health care in many areas is unavailable and medical evacuations abroad remain “incredibly slow”, said Dr. Peeperkorn as he emphasized the need to accelerate the number of medevac patients leaving Gaza.

Before the Rafah crossing was closed on 6 May last year, about 4,700 patients had been evacuated, since October 2023. From 6 May until today, only 480 patients have been medevacked with the assistance of WHO. “We estimate that at least 12,000 patients need the special care and treatments at other places than Gaza,” the WHO representative insisted, calling for all possible routes to reopen, such as the referral pathway to East Jerusalem and the West or the border crossings to Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere.

According to the UN health agency, between 27 November and 24 December 2024, only 29 of 1,200 patients’ requests were approved for medical evacuation abroad. “The stumbling block is the approval process. And of these 1,200 patients, 405 are children and only 10 were approved to travel with companions. This need to change,” said Dr. Peeperkorn.

Ninety-nine children were approved for travel without their companions, which means they cannot leave. The ministry of health in Gaza says that 15,000 girls and boys have been killed in the Strip during the 15 months fighting. “That's around 35 children killed a day, reportedly, every single day for 14 months”, said James Elder, spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Children die not only in the fighting but also of malnutrition, hypothermia, diseases and other war related calamities, he noted.

“The Lancet peer review report actually points to more children,” Mr. Elder added, referring to research published in the Lancet medical journal last Friday that estimated the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas about 40 per cent higher than numbers recorded by the Palestinian territory’s health ministry. Among them, 59 per cent were women, children and over 65s.

The study estimates the total number of people killed to be 64,260 by the end of June but even this is a likely underestimate, the veteran WHO humanitarian said. “It's probably closer to 70,000…We don't even talk about what we call the indirect deaths: people who have all kind of chronic diseases and couldn't access treatments. They died over the last 15 months. That runs in the tens of thousands. That's the estimate.”

At least 113 people have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire was announced on Wednesday night, according to the Hamas-run civil defence agency, including 28 children and 31 women.

Ends

Gaza health needs – WHO, UNICEF 17 January 2025

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