“Its population is witnessing daily threats to its very existence, as the world watches,” Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths warned in a statement, adding that “hope has never been more elusive” amid the deterioration of the conditions.
“The humanitarian community has been left with impossible mission to support more than two million people, even when their own personnel are being killed and displacedas communications blackouts continue, roads are damaged and convoys are shot at, and commercial supplies vital to survival are almost non-existent.”
‘Famine around the corner’
Three months after the horrific October 7 attacks, Gaza has become a place of death and despair, he said, as a public health disaster unfolds before our eyes.
“Infectious diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters as sewers overflow. Some 180 Palestinian women give birth daily in the midst of this chaos. People face the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner,” she stated.
But rocket attacks by militants continue to rain down on Israel, while more than 120 people remain held hostage in Gaza, he added.
With tensions in the West Bank at a boiling point and “the specter of further regional extension of the war” looming, Griffiths said the war must end, “not only for the people of Gaza and their threatened neighbors, but for future generations who will never forget these 90 days of hell and attacks on the most basic precepts of humanity..”
He concluded with a call to the international community to use all possible influence to end the fighting, meet the essential needs of civilians and ensure the release of all hostages.
COVID infections rising rapidly and going unreported, WHO warns
The UN health agency, the WHO, confirmed on Friday that coronavirus numbers are rising globally and that “we should expect more cases” in the coming winter months in the northern hemisphere.
The latest data from the World Health Organization covering the four weeks to December 17 indicated a 52 percent increase in infections compared to the previous 28 days.
That’s equivalent to 850,000 new reported COVID-19 cases, but the real number is likely much higher, according to WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier:
“You know that around the world and you have seen it in many of your own countries, reporting has decreased, surveillance centers have decreased, vaccination centers have decreased, they have also been dismantled or closed,” he said. journalists in Geneva.
“This, of course, leads to an incomplete picture and Unfortunately, we should expect more cases than we have officially reported..”
Most of the infections have been caused by a new strain of COVID called JN.1 that is now being closely examined by the UN health agency as a “variant of concern.” JN.1 was reportedly first detected in the United States before spreading to dozens of countries.
It evolved from the Omicron variant, which was linked to a spike in COVID infections in 2022.
Food price inflation fears ease again: FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported on Friday that the food price index ended the year just over 10 percent below its December 2022 level, further easing concerns about food price inflation around the world.
The monthly figure for a basket of marketed food products also fell by around 1.5 percent in December, with an average of 118.5 points, compared to the previous month.
The most pronounced drop occurred in international sugar prices, which in December were approximately 16.6 percent lower than the previous month.
For 2023, the index was 13.7 percent lower overall than the average value for 2022, with only the international sugar price index higher throughout the year.
The FAO said the drop in sugar prices was mainly due to the strong pace of production in Brazil along with lower use of sugar cane for ethanol production in India.
The grain price index rose 1.5 percent in December, with wheat, corn, rice and parsley rising due to shipping limitations experienced by exporters. However, grain prices for the year are more than 15 percent below the 2022 average.
