Fears of spread of disease as rotting garbage piles up in Gaza
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00:00The stench of rot pollutes Gaza as raw sewage and rubbish fill the streets.
00:05Instead of oxygen, swarms of flies and mosquitoes throng the air.
00:10Ongoing military operations have made waste management an almost impossible task, worsening
00:15the already unlivable conditions for the thousands displaced.
00:20We have been displaced more than seven times.
00:23From the north to Hanounes, then to Karara and then to Rafah.
00:28We move from one area to another area.
00:30Now we reach the garbage dump area.
00:32We live in a garbage dump.
00:34We don't know how to sleep or eat.
00:36I swear to God, when I'm eating, I keep swatting flies away because we don't know how to eat
00:40or live.
00:41According to the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, Israel has refused requests to allow
00:46the emptying of the main landfill sites.
00:49So new mounds of rubbish have appeared in Gaza's crowded tent camps, where people live,
00:55eat and defecate.
00:5670% of infrastructure that serves Gaza, including its sanitation systems, has already been destroyed
01:02in the fighting, as the UN warned that civilians live in an abyss of suffering.
01:07With summer temperatures soaring and severe shortages of basic services such as waste
01:12management, sanitation facilities and water supplies, the spectre of outbreaks of infectious
01:18and communicable diseases looms large.
01:21In June, the World Health Organization declared an outbreak of Hepatitis A, typically contracted
01:27from contaminated food or water.
01:29Aid groups have also warned of a cholera outbreak in the enclave.
01:34As months of rubbish rot in the stifling heat, filth has become another inescapable reality
01:40of the war.