‘Surgery without anesthesia’: WHO director-general updates UNSC on dire health situation in Gaza

Giving a briefing during the UN Security Council’s seventh meeting on the Israel-Hamas war, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus updates members on the dire health situation in Gaza.

“As more and more people move to a smaller and smaller space, overcrowding is increasing the risks of outbreaks of diarrheal and respiratory disease and skin infections,” he says.

WHO has also verified 250 attacks on heath care facilities in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7 in addition to 25 in Israel, he says, without labeling who was responsible for the attack.

Half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary health care centers are not functioning at all, says the WHO chief, adding that four hospitals had been shut down in the last 48 hours alone and revealing that surgeries are being performed without anesthesia.

“WHO continues to call for unfettered access to deliver humanitarian aid to the civilians of Gaza, who are not responsible for this violence, but are suffering in ways that we in this room cannot imagine,” he says.