Critical Gaza aid in limbo as U.S. suspends spending

CGTN Europe spoke to Tess Ingram, Communications specialist with UNICEF

Transcript

00:00Let's talk to Tess Ingram from UNICEF. She's in Gaza City. Tess, welcome back, good to see you.

00:06Given your experience, what will the withdrawal of USAID mean?

00:16The money that comes from the international community for the people in the Gaza Strip

00:21is essential. It's essential to our efforts and it's essential to their well-being.

00:26I have been here in the north of Gaza for a week now and the needs are enormous. People

00:32desperately need that humanitarian assistance to continue both the supplies that we've been

00:38bringing in on trucks, 10,000 in the first two weeks, but also the services that we're scaling

00:43up like mental health support and nutrition screenings. So it's integral that at this

00:48moment in time when there is such great need here that the international community steps up and not

00:53back. AID is reported then to be coming into north Gaza. Is it enough? Not yet, no. We can't

01:03undo 15 months of deprivation in two weeks. We're talking about really serious needs here,

01:09particularly with volatile weather for the last 48 hours. You can really see that people are

01:14suffering outside in the cold without adequate shelter, without warm clothes. I've seen many

01:20children without shoes. So we really are making a dent in a very, very large pool of need and we

01:27are determined to continue our efforts, but for that to happen we need this ceasefire to be sustained

01:33for as long as possible. What are the biggest challenges, the priorities in health care for those

01:41in Gaza? In health care specifically, we're quite concerned at the moment about the impact that this

01:49current rain is having on people, the potential of diseases spreading. There's already a very high

01:54rate of respiratory infections among children and also with the damage to water and sewage networks.

02:00That means that with this perhaps leaking sewage that then is spread by the flood water into places

02:06where people are living, raising the risk of diseases like diarrhea in children, which can

02:11be a real killer. So we're concerned about that, particularly with the impact on the health system

02:17at the moment. Of course there's very few functioning hospitals here and the ones that are

02:22still operating are not operating at full capacity. So that's a concern and UNICEF is trying to bring

02:27in medical supplies, nutrition supplies and scaling up services like immunisation to try and protect

02:33kids from those threats. Some medical needs are obvious and perhaps clear to see. Physical

02:39injuries are obvious, but I want to ask you about the mental health of people, in particular the

02:46mental health of children, especially those who are going to be returning home to what are

02:52effectively ruins. Yeah I don't think we talk about this enough to be honest. I have been to a mental

03:00health session for children between the ages of six and nine here just a few days ago and the

03:06children sat in a circle to talk about things that made them sad and the things that they spoke about

03:10were truly horrific, something that no child should ever have to endure. And there were children there

03:15with very serious symptoms of trauma including one little five-year-old girl Mira who has stopped

03:21speaking. Both of her parents were killed, she's now in the care of her grandmother after they were

03:25separated for more than a year and her grandmother said she's really struggling to know how to help

03:30Mira move forward. So UNICEF estimates that all one million children in the Gaza Strip require

03:36mental health and psychosocial support and that's going to be really key over the coming weeks as

03:41children readjust to life here in whatever way they can. Tess, good to see you. Thanks for coming

03:47on the program once again. Tess Ingram from UNICEF talking to us from Gaza City.