US aid freeze leaves funding hole for evacuations from Gaza: WHO

Geneva [Switzerland], February 26: The US freeze on aid has left the World Health Organization (WHO) without $46 million which it intended to use to evacuate seriously ill patients from Gaza and rebuild damaged hospitals in the coastal strip, a representative said on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters via video link from the Gaza Strip, Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO coordinator for the region, said operations could still be financed for the time being with money from other donors.
But, he said, the WHO hopes that the US funding will be released again.
US President Donald Trump ordered a suspension of humanitarian assistance in January and said every item of expenditure would be reviewed to determine whether it served US interests.
Peeperkorn said 889 seriously ill patients have been evacuated from the Gaza Strip since February 1, including 335 children, but thousands more are waiting for help that they cannot receive there.
He called on Israel to allow transfers to hospitals in East Jerusalem or the occupied West Bank, which were possible before the war.
Peeperkorn also provided an update on the polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip, which he said was going well. He said 92% of the planned 591,000 children aged under 10 had been vaccinated so far.
The campaign was launched after the polio virus was detected in wastewater last year. At the time, around 7,000 children could not be vaccinated due to the fighting between Israel and the Palestinian organization Hamas.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent has opened a field hospital with 54 beds in Gaza City, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The hospital has an intensive care unit and two operating theatres, and can provide care for newborns.
The IFRC said the first patients had arrived at the hospital in the early hours of Tuesday.
A ceasefire has been in place in the Gaza Strip since January 19. But more than 15 months of fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas have left much of the coastal area devastated and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians without homes.
Many are living in tents made of plastic sheeting, which offer little protection from cold weather, storms and rain, according to the United Nations.
Source: Qatar Tribune