{"id":1373563,"date":"2023-12-05T22:48:05","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T22:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=146347"},"modified":"2023-12-05T22:48:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T22:48:05","slug":"predicting-pestilence-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/12\/05\/predicting-pestilence-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Predicting Pestilence"},"content":{"rendered":"
Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice<\/a> over sounds of children screaming. In a video<\/a> posted on Twitter\/X he emphasized that Gaza\u2019s health care system is overwhelmed. Pointing at children packed into the ward of a hospital he said was\u00a0operating at 200 per cent capacity, Elder insisted the hospital “cannot take more children with the wounds of war\u2026with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones.”<\/p>\n Calling it a war on children, Elder warned that “inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing.\u201d<\/p>\n We, the citizens of the world, are those with influence as well as our elected officials. It is the citizens of the world who came out by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks that caused the woefully inadequate gesture of a seven day truce. Now we must urgently pay heed to another persecution of Gaza\u2019s children and families, waged by one of war’s more silent partners, disease.<\/p>\n Those with influence among authorities in Israel and the United States must reckon not only with the reckless carnage they are inflicting on children. They must also grasp the likelihood of an exponentially increased death toll from battlefield illnesses afflicting children. Surviving Gazans live amid ominous pre-conditions for outbreaks of water-borne diseases especially deadly to children: a mounting number of unburied corpses, unsafe drinking water, overcrowding in impromptu mass shelters where sick people are\u00a0 denied any access to health care, as well as a breakdown of basic sewage and sanitation systems.<\/p>\n The World Health Organization warns<\/a> that Gaza is \u201con the precipice of major disease outbreaks.\u201d<\/p>\n On November 15, 2023, the World Health Organization reported<\/a> more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea had been documented in Gaza since mid-October \u2014 already a dramatic increase compared to previous years and after only two months of the bombardment.<\/p>\n \u201cEventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,\u201d said<\/a> Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO.<\/p>\n Yet. without electricity and fuel, it\u2019s impossible to repair Gaza\u2019s collapsed health care system. Israeli authorities cut off<\/a> Gaza\u2019s electricity supply after October 11, according to UNOCHA, and fuel reserves for Gaza\u2019s sole power plant have been dangerously depleted.<\/p>\n History\u00a0repeatedly shows that children in war zones bear the brunt of punishment as bombing wars give way to even more lethal economic war, and what ought to be regarded as biological warfare against children. (It\u2019s noteworthy that Israel is one of only eight world nations not to have signed<\/a> the Biological Weapons Convention.)<\/p>\n The suffering inflicted on Iraqi children following the 1991 war and ensuing years of merciless economic sanctions is well known to U.S. and Israeli authorities<\/p>\n When the U.S. Desert Storm bombing war against Iraq ended, on Feb 28, 1991, a new kind of warfare proved far more devastating than even the worst of the bombing. By 1995, UN workers recognized that children were dying, first by the hundreds, then by the thousands, and eventually by the hundreds of thousands because economic sanctions prevented necessary access to medicines, clean water, and adequate food.<\/p>\n