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The World Health Organization is warning of an “imminent public health catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip. The displacement of 1 million people, overcrowding in shelters and a lack of fuel needed to run sewage, waste and water desalination plants have created a perfect storm for the spread of disease.
“Hi guys, I’m still alive,” is how Bisan Owda, 25, starts most of her Instagram reels. But after 16 days of Israeli bombing, the filmmaker told her 665,000 followers: “My biggest fear is not to die, my biggest fear is to live.”
Owda and her parents are sleeping alongside some 50,000 other displaced people in and around Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip. They are among the more than 1 million Gazans who have been displaced since Islamist militants from Hamas carried out a massacre in southern Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,400 Israelis and foreigners and kidnapping hundreds more. The attack prompted Israel to launch a bombing campaign against the enclave, warning Gazans living in the north to move southwards.
According to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, at least 5,790 Gazans have so far been killed in Israeli air strikes.
The Owda family home in the village of Beit Hanoun in the north was bombed, as was Owda’s office in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City. She lost her possessions and all of her filming equipment.
‘Diseases are spreading’
Conditions in the camp are extremely difficult, Owda says. All around Shifa Hospital, families have made camp in the streets, the carpark and inside the building’s corridors.
“Winter is coming. It’s getting colder, we don’t have a proper place to sleep, we don’t have any blankets,” Owda says. “It rained on me while I was sleeping and it made my mother start crying. For some people winter reminds them of hot chocolate, but winter in Gaza is disastrous. Are we…
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