The Struggle to Help Gaza's Starving Children - Interview with MENA RD Adele Khodr : Matt Stieb / New York Magazine

Article shared by Tom McDermott

This interview adds a bit of new information about UNICEF's staffing in Gaza and the types of supplies being provided.

Tom

Click here for the article in New York Magazine

Excerpts:


"Where are the UNICEF workers organizing all this?

We have an office in Gaza. We moved the staff to Khan Yunis, and now our staff are in Rafah. And we have increased the number of international staff we have there. Before the war we had two, and now sometimes we have ten, sometimes it could be 12 or 13 international staff. The number of locals is much higher than that.

And then we have what we call a supply hub in Egypt that makes frequent visits to el-ʻArīsh, but the majority of them are based in Cairo, basically doing supply and logistics."

"At the beginning, we were delivering, number one, large quantities of drinking water. Now we are not doing that anymore, but we are securing the operation of one of the desalination plants, so we can do operation and maintenance on it. And that’s a major source of water.

Number two are vaccines. Then we have what we call emergency supplies. We have an emergency kit that contains some very basic mother-and-child-health medical supplies. They are not surgical supplies because this is not our specialty — it’s the specialty of the WHO. But the kit includes antibiotics, analgesics, special medications for acute respiratory infections, for diarrhea, for the mothers and their children. Then we have something called a family hygiene kit for sanitation, which includes detergent, soap, and toothpaste.

We have also distributed something called high-energy biscuits, and some ready-to-use food for the small kids, and this is not only for the kids who are malnourished, but for the regular kids, who might be 6 months old. And then ready-to-use therapeutic food and a special type of milk powder that is given with the ready-to-use therapeutic food. Sometimes we bring in fuel. We also send some dignity kits, mostly for women, for issues that have to do with female hygiene. And we distributed a lot of winter clothes for children when the weather was very bad."