WHO Chief warns of imminent famine in northern Gaza, calls for urgent humanitarian aid
GAZA – Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Saturday that the warning of global food security experts about the possibility of a famine in the northern Gaza Strip is very worrying, according to WAFA news agency.
In a post on X, Ghebreyesus called for “an immediate surge in humanitarian aid in Gaza and providing safe access to it, especially food and medicines to treat severe malnutrition within days, not weeks.”
A report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee, composed of leading independent international experts in food security, nutrition, and mortality, warned of a “strong possibility of imminent famine” in northern Gaza.
“Immediate action, within days, not weeks, is required to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert.
The report stressed that “the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is extremely serious and rapidly deteriorating.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates there are between 75,000 and 95,000 people still in northern Gaza.
The FRC said it could be “assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease are rapidly increasing” in north Gaza.
“Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future,” the global hunger monitor said.
The IPC warned last month that the entire Gaza Strip was at risk of famine, while top UN officials last week described the northern Gaza Strip as “apocalyptic” and said everyone there was “at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”
According to UN data, the amount of aid entering the Strip has dropped to its lowest level in a year as the Zionist occupation forces blocked all efforts to deliver aid, particularly to northern Gaza.
