Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at the hospital Rafah, Gaza, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Representative of the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territory Richard Peeperkorn reported on Tuesday that more than two-thirds of the 36 hospitals and over 70% of primary healthcare facilities in Gaza are currently non-operational.

"In just 66 days, the health system has gone from 36 functional hospitals to 11 partially functional hospitals — one in the north and 10 in the south … Besides that, just 29% of primary healthcare facilities are functional," Peeperkorn told a UN briefing in Geneva.

As of Monday, thirteen out of the 36 hospitals were still operational, as per the latest update from the World Health Organization on the war in Gaza. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus characterized the state of healthcare in Gaza on Tuesday as "on its knees and collapsing," cautioning that the humanitarian crisis would escalate with the approaching winter.

The spokesperson highlighted that Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, the last minimally operational hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, has become a humanitarian disaster zone. He depicted overcrowded corridors filled with trauma patients, where medical professionals attended to individuals on the floor, facing shortages of fuel, oxygen, food, and water.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that the two main hospitals in southern Gaza are functioning at three times their bed capacity. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the occupancy rates have surged to 206% in inpatient departments and 250% in intensive care units. These hospitals are additionally serving as shelters for thousands of displaced individuals.

Infectious diseases sweeping Gaza

Amid the war on Gaza, Gazans have found themselves due to "Israel's" genocidal war, with the lack of clean water, food, medicinal aid, overcrowded shelters, and the cold weather of December, illnesses and diseases are tearing through the survivors.

As Gaza remains deprived of aid and with the constant brutal bombardment that destroys hospitals and aid coming into the Strip, those who have fallen ill find themselves unable to receive treatment as doctors scurry the limited resources they still have to Palestinians whom Israeli strikes have injured.

The catastrophic collapse of Gaza's healthcare system has made it unfeasible to collect data on the exact number of people and children consumed by illnesses. Still, the World Health Organization, with records from the Ministry of Health in Gaza and the UNRWA, reported at least 369,000 cases of infectious diseases. However, Shannon Barkley, the health systems team lead at the World Health Organization’s offices in Gaza and the West Bank, mentioned that the aforementioned number is restricted to southern Gaza and excludes cases in northern Gaza, leading the organization to predict a much higher number.

According to Barkley, contagious respiratory diseases, like cold or pneumonia are among the most common, but milder diseases are circulating, leaving children, the elderly, and immunodeficient individuals at risk of serious health hazards because of the pre-existing grim living conditions Palestinians are forced under.