A World Health Organization official said on Friday that it should be possible to scale up aid imports into Gaza massively to around 600 trucks a day under the terms of a ceasefire deal.
If successful, the ceasefire set to begin on Sunday would halt fighting that has razed much of Gaza, killed over 46,000 people and displaced most of its pre-war population of 2.3 million several times over, according to local authorities.
The aid surge requires more than a 10-fold daily increase in lorries from the daily average of 51 that U.N. data shows entered the enclave in early January.
“I think the possibility is very much there and specifically when other crossings will be opened up,” Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told a Geneva press briefing. “This can be built up very rapidly.”
Critical details of the scale-up are still to be worked out, aid workers say, with details for how to improve security being one of the main outstanding concerns.
The WHO plans to bring in an unspecified number of prefabricated hospitals to support Gaza’s decimated health sector over the next two months, Peeperkornsaid. Currently, only about half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functional, according to the WHO.
Peeperkorn said he expected the ceasefire to allow for more medical evacuations for the over 12,000 patients currently on the waiting list, of whom around a third are children.
About half of the patients have injuries from the 15-month war such as amputated limbs and spinal injuries, he said.
“We hope now with the ceasefire process that this will be better facilitated and supported,” he said.
(Reuters)
