As Israel continues to restrict aid, Gaza’s shattered health system is struggling to treat and contain illnesses spreading through overcrowded tent camps caused by Israel’s deliberate destruction of housing.
By Ahmed Dremly and Ibtisam Mahdi for 972 Mag
Eman Abu Jame had counted her family among the lucky ones. Israel bombed their home in the southern Gaza Strip at the beginning of the war, forcing them to move from one shelter to another. But throughout the first two years of the genocide, neither she, her husband, nor her children suffered any serious health problems.
That all changed in October 2025, when they took refuge in a crowded tent camp in Khan Younis.
By the time they arrived, the lack of hygiene, insect swarms, and severe overcrowding had turned the camp into a breeding ground for disease.
Two months later, Abu Jame’s 8-year-old son, Mousa, and her 47-year-old husband, Abdul Majeed, began showing symptoms: Their bodies started to swell, accompanied by severe diarrhea and high fevers.
Due to the difficult economic conditions and skyrocketing prices of meat, fish, and other protein-rich foods, their protein levels dropped rapidly, worsening their ability to retain fluids.
‘We were completely unable to buy food and clean, drinkable water,’ Abu Jame told +972 Magazine. ‘Everything was so expensive back then, and we simply did not have the money. My husband couldn’t afford anything — even bread was unavailable.’
Doctors struggled to diagnose both father and son. At first, they suspected a gluten allergy, but tests ruled it out. Travelling abroad for treatment was also impossible due to the closure of crossings. The only effective treatment was medical albumin, a protein solution that helped stabilize their condition.
‘When [Mousa] took the medication, he would get better,’ Abu Jame explained. ‘But whenever he missed it, his body would start swelling up all over again.’
Yet the treatment was extremely difficult to acquire, thanks to Israel and her stated Genocidal aims.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has heavily restricted the entry of medicines and blocked international NGOs from delivering medical supplies to the Strip. Even after the announcement of a ceasefire last October, Israel continued to block aid. As of this month, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 47 percent of essential medicines, 59 percent of medical supplies, and 87 percent of laboratory testing materials are out of stock.
As the medication ran out, Mousa’s body swelled further with fluid, and he died in January. Three months later, Abdul Majeed also succumbed to the same mysterious illness that doctors had failed to diagnose.
While the disease remained unidentified, it was clearly linked to conditions in the camp — potentially transmitted by a rodent bite or an ectoparasitic infestation. In just the first four months of 2026, according to the UN, there have been over 70,000 cases of similar infestations across Gaza, where parasites live on or under the skin and become a vector for disease. More than 80 percent of displacement sites report visible pests alongside rampant skin infections like scabies, lice, and bedbugs, while Save the Children recently noted that two in three children in Gaza live in displacement sites plagued by these risks.
Dr. Ayman Abu Rahma, director of the Preventive Medicine Department at the Ministry of Health, told +972 that solid waste — including medical waste — sewage, and corpses buried under the rubble are all contributing to the spread of rodents and disease.
‘The environmental situation, unfortunately, has been in severe deterioration since the beginning of the war and is still continuing,’ he explained. ‘The crisis has now reached its peak: Although the problem already existed in 2024 and 2025, the scale of this summer’s infestation is unprecedented. High temperatures have accelerated the reproduction of insects and rodents, while hundreds of thousands of tons of uncollected garbage have piled up around the tents due to destroyed equipment and fuel shortages.’
Israel’s destruction of sewage infrastructure, Abu Rahma added, has further worsened conditions, and the ongoing Israeli siege has left the local market without the materials needed to fight rodent infestations. ‘Damaged sewage systems have created pools of stagnant wastewater that serve as breeding grounds for vermin, and widespread rubble has become a natural habitat for rats. Restrictions on the entry of pesticides and poison baits have made effective control nearly impossible.’
There has already been a significant rise in complaints about rats from Gazans living in tents, Abu Rahma noted. ‘Rodents have been gnawing on the limbs of sleeping children and damaging belongings and clothing. There are also reports of rodent species not previously seen and native in the Gaza Strip, with some speculating that the Israeli army brought them during the war.’
In the displacement camp in Khan Younis, Abu Jame’s 6-year-old son, Yasser, is suffering from the same illness and symptoms experienced by his father and brother. To make matters worse, when they went to nearby Nasser Hospital for treatment, Yasser’s immune system had been so compromised by the disease that he contracted an additional skin infection.
‘There is no cleanliness at all, and infections spread easily from those around us,’ the 32-year-old grieving mother said. ‘Even the hospitals are neglected, the rooms are tiny, and patients are crammed right next to each other.’
Fortunately, Yasser’s health is currently showing small but steady signs of improvement. Abu Jame now hopes to secure a medical referral for him to be treated abroad, praying he will not face the same fate as his father and brother.
Sick inside Gaza’s tent camps
In May 2024, during a weeks-long Israeli assault on Jabalia in northern Gaza, 5-year-old Rital Halawa was playing outside her bombed-out home in the center of the city when an Israeli quadcopter drone appeared above her — and dropped a grenade.
‘The girl was engulfed in flames. I saw her screaming,’ her mother, Samar, 27, recalled.
Rital suffered severe third-degree burns across her face, chest, abdomen, and legs. Since their home in Jabalia was bombed in November 2023, the family has been living in a tent amid rising temperatures, sewage, and swarms of biting insects — conditions that have severely worsened her recovery. The lack of electricity and ventilation leaves Rital with ‘no way for her to breathe,’ Samar said, as her body sweats profusely beneath the tight pressure garments used to treat her burns.
The heat causes intense itching, creating a dangerous cycle of reinjury. ‘She keeps scratching and scratching, which irritates the tissue, tears it, and causes it to bleed,’ Samar explained. The reopened raw tissue is then exposed to dangerous infections that further aggravate the irritation.
Dr. Ibrahim Haboub, a dermatology specialist at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, described to +972 the growing outbreak of skin diseases among displaced Gazans. Insect bites have become the most widespread issue, especially in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, and Haboub warned that children are particularly vulnerable, as constant scratching often leads to secondary bacterial infections and more serious complications.
Haboub also reported widespread lice infestations and a sharp increase in scabies cases, driven by severe overcrowding in shelters, camps, and schools. Other skin conditions, including fungal infections, have also become more common across Gaza — especially among Palestinians who were detained in Israeli prisons, some of whom require prolonged and intensive treatment due to severe infections and drug resistance.
This crisis, Haboub noted, has been compounded by a severe shortage of medical supplies. For the Halawa family, who are already struggling financially, those shortages have made Rital’s recovery nearly impossible. Her father is unemployed, and the family now relies on charity and soup kitchens to survive. Nutritious food is expensive, and Rital’s wounds worsened significantly during the height of Israel’s starvation campaign last summer.
Her essential medical creams alone cost NIS 80 ($20), in addition to transportation expenses for her weekly physiotherapy sessions at a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) clinic, forcing the family into painful sacrifices. ‘I don’t buy milk for my infant to pay for [the transportation to] her physiotherapy,’ Samar said.
The psychological toll has been just as devastating as the physical pain. Rital is frequently bullied because of her injuries, Samar explained, leaving her deeply depressed.
‘The girl’s face was disfigured — I can’t hide it,’ Samar said. ‘She needs specialized plastic surgeries, which are not available in Gaza.’
‘A completely man-made crisis’
For Craig Kenzie, Gaza Medical Coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, the Strip remains in the grip of a ‘completely man-made and engineered humanitarian crisis’ caused by Israel’s blockade, despite the announcement of a ceasefire over seven months ago.
Operating with 1,500 local staff inside Gaza, the organization has been unable to bring in new international personnel or medical supplies since the beginning of January due to Israeli restrictions. As Kenzie explained, this has left ‘every single aspect of our programs at severe risk of having to be reduced or completely shut down in the next period.’
More than half of medications for chronic diseases are now out of stock, he said. Essential wound dressing supplies are running low, while topical ointments used to treat skin diseases continue to be blocked by Israel without explanation.
‘In Deir Al-Balah, we were doing surgery in tents,’ Kenzie said. ‘When surgical equipment breaks down, there is no replacement because we cannot get replacement parts or equipment.’
The blockade has not only caused severe shortages of medical equipment and personnel, but has also further restricted access to clean water. According to MSF, one of the largest distributors of drinking water in Gaza, Israel has destroyed or damaged 90 percent of the Strip’s water and sanitation infrastructure — which the organization describes as a form of collective punishment.
Throughout the war, Israel has also prevented the entry of materials needed to properly treat water, leaving MSF to build improvised reverse osmosis water treatment plants with salvaged parts. Powered by a generator, the unit purifies groundwater contaminated with salt, dirt, and sewage, producing 5 million liters of drinkable water each day.
Yet even operating this basic system raises difficult ethical and operational questions, Kenzie explained.
‘Do you keep making water today for the people that need it, knowing that the generator for that is due for service, and that if you run it today, it might break tomorrow, and then it will never be able to be repaired?’ he asked. ‘Or do you shut it down and tell people, ‘No, sorry. I don’t have any clean water for you today’?’
What pains Kenzie most is knowing that desperately needed aid is sitting just kilometers away while Israel continues to block its entry. ‘It is just unacceptable,’ he said, ‘that the government committing this genocide is also the one that’s able to block and restrict the humanitarian response to it.’