On Gaza
Monthly Wrap-up #3 | September, 2024
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Dear reader,
The first time I wrote about Gaza was in late May. The war had been going on for over half a year and I came across a report published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF — Doctors Without Borders) titled “Gaza’s Silent Killings”. A title that tells so much in so few words.
Their report described from the eyes of health workers in Gaza how the medical system was collapsing due to the war. It was a gripping read, incredibly so when you read it from a place where basic healthcare is a given. Gaza’s silent killings were and continue to be those not caused by bullets nor bombings, but instead caused by the lack of medical aid available…
Above all though, they are a message that needed to be echoed, especially at a time when Israel was launching its Rafah incursion.
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Sadly, the war did not end there and in August dire news from Gaza began making waves in the public health space: polio has reemerged in the Gaza strip twenty-five years after being eradicated.
Polio is an incredibly dangerous diseases that spreads mostly through asymptomatic infections in poor sanitary conditions, but it can claim a high death toll especially among children. The detection of one single case in Gaza represents a serious threat to the whole region — including Israel itself.
This was an opportunity to revisit my first story on which I wrote back in 2021. It was about polio eradication in Africa, which at the time was a significant step towards the eradication of polio worldwide.
Fast forward three years and we are stumbling backwards on one of humanities greatest achievements.
