Gaza is home to the largest number of amputee children in modern history, a senior UN official told the Security Council on Wednesday.
Director of the Financing and Partnerships Division of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Lisa Doughten, said women and children are hard-hit by the trauma of the war and each day ten children are losing one or both of their legs.
“Gaza is home to the largest cohort of child amputees in modern history,” she said, also noting that women there are three times more likely to miscarry or die from childbirth. “We cannot claim ignorance to what is happening — nor can we afford to look away,” she emphasised, repeating calls for the Council and Member States to act, adding: “These atrocities must end.”
She warned that the systematic and permanent targeting of the health sector has deprived more than two million people in the Gaza Strip of receiving basic health services, where more than 50,000 pregnant women are deprived of maternity care.
Read: UNICEF chief warns Gaza kids face ‘post-generational challenges’
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