Outline of Dr Ghebreyesus WHO Director-General Remarks at the Member State Information Session

On 13 November 2023, he had already briefed the Security Council on the health situation in Gaza.

More than 11,000 people have now been killed, almost 70% of them women and children.

The intensification of hostilities over the last three days has paralyzed the health system’s capacities to maintain reporting, but we know that casualties have only increased.

WHO is on the ground in Gaza, alongside its partners, to support health workers, who are physically and mentally exhausted and are doing their best in unimaginable conditions.

In addition to caring for the 28,000 people who are wounded, many of them with life-threatening injuries, they are trying to manage the regular health needs of more than two million people.

More than 180 women give birth in Gaza every single day; there are 2,000 patients on cancer therapy; and there are more than 350,000 patients with diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.

The vast majority of the population has now been displaced south of the Wadi Gaza, and is being serviced by just one-third of the original hospital capacity – hospitals which are already full, not supplied properly, and that have minimal surgical and intensive care capacities.

Most of all, we need attacks on health to stop.

Since the 7th of October, WHO has verified more than 250 attacks on health care in Gaza and the West Bank, in addition to 25 attacks on health care in Israel – hospitals, clinics, patients, ambulances.

More than 100 of our UN colleagues have been killed, and counting.

More than half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary health care centers are not functioning at all. Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities.