Gaza Genocide25 July, 20262 min read
Chickenpox Spreads Rapidly in Gaza Displacement Camps, UN Health Cluster Cites Overcrowding
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Around 9,000–9,300 chickenpox cases in Gaza displacement camps over two weeks. Overcrowding prevents isolation; war-related vaccination gaps leave many children unprotected.
Chickenpox spreads in camps
In Gaza’s displacement camps, chickenpox is spreading rapidly, with around 9,300 cases recorded in just two weeks across more than 130 health facilities, as doctors warn the real scale is almost certainly larger than the figures suggest. Euronews reported that the UN health cluster attributed the surge to extreme overcrowding in displacement sites, high summer temperatures, and declining access to clean water.
At Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, paediatric consultant Dr Sharif Mattar said the published statistics were likely a significant undercount, adding that most children with chickenpox were being seen in tents or primary healthcare centres and never reached hospital. Nurse Sheimaa Hajji, working at a health centre, told Euronews that “All the children play together and use the same space,” as she said the disease passes “from child to child and from family to family.”
Lighters amid shortages
As lighters and cooking gas shortages force families to rely on wood fires for cooking, a disposable cigarette lighter became an unlikely luxury item as essential to daily survival as food, water and fuel in the tent camps of southern Gaza. The Lynchburg News and Advance described displaced Palestinian woman Nisreen Abu Saada cooking vegetables over a wood fire Tuesday outside her tent in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, using a lighter to ignite cardboard to start a fire.
The same report showed Palestinian lighter repairman Hassan Abu Latifa igniting a repaired lighter Tuesday at his kiosk in Khan Younis, holding damaged plastic lighters as he worked. In Khan Younis, the article said displaced Palestinians shelter Tuesday at a tent camp amid shortages of lighters and cooking gas that forced many families to rely on wood fires for cooking.
Yellow Line drives displacement
After the ceasefire, Israeli forces continued to advance and widen the buffer zone tied to what residents call the “Yellow Line,” and the expansion pushed thousands of Palestinian families to abandon their tents and move west of the Gaza Strip. اخبارك نت reported that drinking-water trucks and roaming vegetable sellers stopped reaching camps near the line for fear of being targeted, worsening the thirst crisis and leaving thousands struggling to obtain drinking water and other basic needs.
In the Mawasi Khan Younis area, residents mourned 10-year-old Sama Al-Sufi after it was announced yesterday that she died following injuries from an Israeli bullet to the head inside her tent in the middle of last week. Sky News Arabia’s correspondent quoted Hamdan Al-Sufi saying “random shooting has undermined life in the camps near the Yellow Line,” while Mohammed Al-Zamili described how Adel Abu Bakr died after being struck by a lethal bullet while preparing to go to Friday prayers yesterday inside his tent in the Bir 19 camp south of Mawasi Khan Younis.