By Sharon Zhang / Truthout
The health of hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced children in Lebanon is at risk, Save the Children warns, as health officials have detected a case of cholera and Israel continues attacking health care centers and workers in its assault on civilians in the country.
On Tuesday, Save the Children reported that overcrowding in shelters and a lack of resources for basic hygiene are putting 400,000 children in Lebanon at risk of skin diseases, cholera, and other illnesses like hepatitis A and measles. These children are among the estimated 1.2 million people in Lebanon who have been forcibly displaced by Israel over the past month, amounting to a fifth of Lebanon’s population being displaced.
The spread of disease in Lebanon could have disastrous consequences. Last week, the Lebanon Ministry of Public Health reported that it had confirmed a case of cholera among displaced people in a northern region of Lebanon. Cholera, which spreads through contaminated water and food, can kill within hours in patients with acute symptoms and spreads easily, as most people do not develop any symptoms when infected.
Health officials have also detected scabies among displaced people, a parasitic skin infestation in which mites burrow into skin, causing skin sores and, potentially, heart and kidney disease.
With winter approaching, many families will be forced to sleep outdoors or in shelters without adequate heating, even further raising the risk of disease among children and displaced people, Save the Children said. Clean water is also not reliable at many shelters, the group said.
“Everything is difficult. We’re running out of essential medications for chronic illnesses, especially for the elderly. We can’t even find blood pressure medicine,” said Fatima, a woman who was displaced from southern Lebanon along with her 11-year-old child, per Save the Children.
“Can you imagine 30 families per floor sharing a single toilet? It’s a school toilet, so there’s no shower or water heater. We have to fill plastic containers with water and leave them in the sun to heat up, just so we can bathe the children. The elderly and kids are falling sick because they must wash with cold water. These living conditions are unbearable,” she said.
The World Health Organization has warned that poor sanitation conditions are creating risk of disease spread as Lebanon’s health system is already overburdened. The group has documented 23 cases of Israeli attacks on health care in Lebanon, with attacks killing at least 72 people so far. Nearly half of primary care centers in affected areas have been forced to close, while 10 hospitals have been fully or partially evacuated due to Israel’s massacres.
On Monday, Israel struck an area near Lebanon’s largest hospital, the Rafik Hariri University Hospital in south Beirut. Health officials say that the death toll is at least 13, including one child, while 57 others were wounded in the strike on the densely populated area.
Though Israel has issued forced evacuation orders in parts of southern Beirut, CNN found in an analysis that the area it struck was not covered by evacuation orders.
Israeli forces claimed to have struck a Hezbollah target near the hospital, and that Hezbollah stores assets beneath hospitals.
However, Israel has provided no evidence for these claims, and, in some cases, their assertions have been shown to be lies; on Tuesday, BBC published a report in which a reporter visited a Beirut hospital that Israel has forcibly evacuated on the basis that Hezbollah stored gold in its basement. The report found zero evidence of a Hezbollah bunker, debunking the falsehood.
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Sharon Zhang
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter: @zhang_sharon.
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