Emerging Health Crisis: Palestinians are facing a strange disease
“The decomposition of corpses produces toxic gases and chemicals that spread in the atmosphere and spread until they reach other areas with the wind, which infects humans and living organisms with serious diseases.”
As the tragic situation continues due to the continuation of the war in Gaza, Heba Rashed, chairwoman of the board of directors of one of the charitable organizations in Egypt, revealed that the association was communicating with a Palestinian patient who arrived in Egypt from Gaza with a foot disease.
She said that the Palestinian patient suffered from inflammation of the foot tissue after being exposed to a decomposing corpse, among the decomposing corpses spread throughout the Gaza Strip, and he could not find a place to bury it.
The case of the Palestinian patient raised a question about what health repercussions might occur as a result of the spread of decomposed bodies in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israeli bombing and raids? This comes in light of the deterioration of health services and the withdrawal of a number of hospitals from service.
Dr. Hamed Abdullah Hamed, Professor of Dermatology at the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, explains to Arab media how decomposing bodies cause many diseases to the residents of the Gaza Strip. He says that it is known that the spread of corpses without burying them in a timely manner, as well as the spread of the remains of the wounded and subsequent secretions, etc., affects the health of the living, as the decomposition of corpses produces toxic gases and chemicals that spread in the atmosphere and fly until they reach other areas with the wind. This infects humans and living organisms with serious diseases.
He said that the dust resulting from the bombing and demolition of homes, as well as the effects resulting from dropping bombs and emptying air, also leads to the occurrence of skin diseases such as burns, ulcers, toxic and contaminated purulent wounds, and what is known as “abscesses,” in addition to the spread of putrefactive bacteria resulting from the decomposition of corpses, a type known as “Anaerobic bacteria” are responsible for the unpleasant odor that emanates from decomposing corpses. They are dangerous, and if they infect the skin, treatment with known antibiotics is useless.
He says that there is another danger that the sector may suffer from, which concerns hospitals that have gone out of service due to the accumulation of wounded people’s waste containing blood stains, some bones, skin, some tissues, sores and pus, and the difficulty of recycling these wastes, which results in people suffering from severe infections in the body’s tissues and an increase in infection with viral
hepatitis B and C.”
Earlier British Foreign Secretary David Cameron expressed, his concern about the lack of “improvement” in the Gaza Strip, which is mired in a humanitarian crisis due to the war between Israel and Hamas, at the conclusion of a meeting with Israeli war council member Benny Gantz.
“This must change,” Cameron said on the “X” platform, noting also that Britain is “deeply concerned about the possibility of a military attack in Rafah.”
