Ramping up flood emergency response in Nigeria – WHO
After the devastation caused by flooding and a collapsed dam in northeast Nigeria, UN humanitarians confirmed on Monday that the aid response is being stepped up to vulnerable communities.
Latest assessments indicate that the floods have displaced more than 225,000 people and affected well over 610,000. So far, 201 deaths have been reported in 15 of the country’s 36 states where vast stretches of farmland are under water.
In Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, the floodwaters have hampered access to health facilities, schools and markets and 14 health facilities have been flooded.
In an update, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said that acute watery diarrhoea, malaria, and other waterborne and infectious diseases are major health risks – as well as malnutrition.
To help affected communities, the UN health agency has deployed four mobile health teams to dispense essential drugs and medical supplies to affected areas in Maiduguri.
The medical workers have carried out routine immunizations, antenatal and postnatal services as well as mental health care, and coordinated medical referrals to larger hospitals.
Another WHO team of 50 frontline volunteers has been deployed to carry out active case searches for water-borne and vaccine preventable diseases in camps for the displaced.
Sanitary disaster in Gaza ‘worsening by the day’, warns UNRWA
Overcrowded shelters in Gaza, a lack of running water and drains and the constant threat of disease are making conditions worse by the day for people in the enclave, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, warned on Monday.
In a new alert, UNRWA highlighted how Gazans’ shelters have become a target for insects and rodents after more than 11 months of war – echoing deep concerns among humanitarians about the lack of basic hygiene items including soap that have left families unprotected from communicable diseases.
In an update, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said that a 75 gramme bar of soap costs $10 in Gaza, while shampoo, detergent and washing-up liquid are no longer available in markets.
This lack of hygiene items “disproportionately affects children, pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems”, said the WHO, which underscored that simple handwashing with soap is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of diseases linked to poor sanitary conditions, such as diarrhoea, respiratory infections, scabies and other skin infections.
“It can protect approximately one in three children who suffer from diarrhoea and prevent the spread of germs to food, drinks, and surfaces,” the UN health agency insisted, in support of appeals to allow a minimum of five trucks per day into Gaza from commercial vendors containing soap and basic hygiene supplies, both in the south and north.
Gaza’s civil society activists are victims of war too, warn top rights experts
Staying with Gaza, top independent human rights experts said on Monday that there is “literally no place left” for civil society activists to work safely, after air strikes and ground attacks by the Israeli military.
In recent months, the oldest human rights organization in Gaza, the Palestinian Human Rights Centre, has seen staff members killed and its offices damaged beyond repair during operations by the Israeli Defense Forces, said Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor and other experts who report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva in an independent capacity.
Ms. Lawlor noted that two women lawyers from the Palestinian NGO were killed in February 2024 – Nour Abu al-Nour, who died with her two-year-old daughter, her parents and four siblings in an air raid on her house in Rafah – and Dana Yaghi, killed alongside 37 family members in an air raid on a house in Deir el-Balah.
In a statement, Ms. Lawlor said that it was “a terrible tragedy that justice for these two women human rights defenders, their family members and their children, seems so far away” while human rights defenders who worked to keep hope alive for justice…are becoming victims themselves”.
Daniel Johnson, UN News
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Source of original article: United Nations (news.un.org). Photo credit: UN. The content of this article does not necessarily reflect the views or opinion of Global Diaspora News (www.globaldiasporanews.com).
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