{"id":5614,"date":"2023-12-26T16:11:14","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T22:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5614"},"modified":"2023-12-26T16:11:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T22:11:18","slug":"health-workers-struggle-to-prevent-an-infectious-disease-disaster-in-waiting-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/12\/26\/health-workers-struggle-to-prevent-an-infectious-disease-disaster-in-waiting-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Health workers struggle to prevent an infectious disease &#8216;disaster in waiting&#8217; in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2023\/12\/26\/1221414237\/gaza-infectious-disease-outbreak-public-health-israel-palestine\">NPR<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Gaza, the World Health Organization warns that illness may ultimately kill more people than Israel&#8217;s offensive. Infectious diseases are &#8220;soaring,&#8221;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/news\/item\/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza\">says the WHO<\/a>. Over 100,000 cases of diarrhea have been reported, with rates among children 25 times higher than before the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>War has shattered Gaza&#8217;s health-care system, including its disease surveillance capabilities. So global health groups and health professionals are doing what they can to spot and prevent outbreaks in an increasingly desperate situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s our way of detecting the emergence of diseases that can result in an epidemic very, very, very quickly,&#8221; says\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.emro.who.int\/about-who\/regional-director\/rick-brennan-acting-regional-emergency-director.html\">Rick Brennan<\/a>, the WHO&#8217;s Regional Emergency Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before the war, despite the Israeli blockade, humanitarian groups say Gaza&#8217;s public health system was doing a pretty good job. The 2 million-plus Palestinians living there had solid vaccination rates, access to three dozen hospitals and effective disease surveillance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;There was a reasonably good system to detect disease outbreaks,&#8221; says Brennan, &#8220;to pick up cases of infectious diseases, to transfer the specimens to test them in the laboratories, and then implement control measures.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2023\/12\/26\/1221414237\/gaza-infectious-disease-outbreak-public-health-israel-palestine\">https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2023\/12\/26\/1221414237\/gaza-infectious-disease-outbreak-public-health-israel-palestine<\/a>Continue reading<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NPR In Gaza, the World Health Organization warns that illness may ultimately kill more people than Israel&#8217;s offensive. Infectious diseases are &#8220;soaring,&#8221;&nbsp;says the WHO. Over 100,000 cases of diarrhea have been reported, with rates among children 25 times higher than before the war. War has shattered Gaza&#8217;s health-care system, including its disease surveillance capabilities. So [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5615,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614\/revisions\/5615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}