Quote:According to a December report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 25,000 people in Gaza were injured by Israeli forces in 2018.

And as it turns out, Gaza’s visible enemy is primarily to thank for the emergence of the invisible one: the superbug – defined in the Oxford dictionary as a “strain of bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotic drugs”.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism notes that Gaza is a “particularly fertile breeding ground for superbugs because its health system has been crippled by years of blockade and antibiotics are in short supply… Shortages of water, power and fuel for generators mean doctors often cannot meet even basic hygiene standards.”

Citing medical professionals, the report goes on to specify that “staff sometimes can’t even wash their hands… and there are shortages of gloves, gowns and chlorine tablets for sanitising the hospitals”. Indeed, the Israeli blockade, imposed in 2007, has brought Gaza’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, details some of the numerous impediments to healthcare in the besieged coastal enclave, such as Israeli restrictions that “apply to replacing broken equipment, importing advanced medical equipment and drugs, [and] travel by physicians for professional training outside Gaza”.