CGTN Europe interviewed Rosalia Bollen, Communication Specialist for UNICEF
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00:00Now, Rosalia Bolin is a communication specialist with the United Nations, and she joins us now from Rafa in Gaza.
00:08Rosalia, thank you so much for your time.
00:10There are so many pressing needs for the people of Gaza.
00:15What is the most serious currently?
00:20One year into the war, it is just inconceivable that these attacks continue on a daily basis.
00:27We have, on a daily basis, reports of mass casualty events, including with many reported child victims.
00:35So what people in Gaza need most is an immediate, immediate ceasefire.
00:41To make things even worse, winter has started in Gaza.
00:45Temperatures have dropped, there's lots of storms and rain, and people are cold, they're wet, they're tired, they're worn out.
00:52Everyone's miserable, really.
00:54When I go out to cover stories of children and their families, mothers beg me to help them find warm clothes for their children.
01:04UNICEF will be bringing in warm clothes, winter clothes for children soon.
01:11But what people really need first and foremost is an end to this war.
01:17Absolutely, and we've seen some hope because of the ceasefire that's just been brokered between Hezbollah and Israel.
01:25Do the people on the ground hold out much hope that the moves we're seeing now to once again try for a Gaza ceasefire will be successful?
01:35What I see when I go around Gaza and when I visit people in their tents and I speak with families and children
01:43is that they are too busy with surviving.
01:48Actually, some are completely indifferent, they look like ghosts.
01:54But many people, their main concern is finding food or finding medicines or clothes, as I said.
02:01There is deprivation and hardship at so many different levels.
02:06You may have heard the UN, including UNICEF, say that there is no safe place for children and their families in Gaza.
02:13And we mean that literally in terms of the risk of being killed by bombs and bullets.
02:20But we also mean that because of the living conditions, the conditions here in Gaza put the lives of children and their families at immediate risk.
02:30The health care system has been decimated.
02:33There is no access to sufficient food and to sufficiently nutritious food.
02:38The sanitation situation is very dire, highly unhygienic.
02:43Diseases are spreading. It's cold. People don't have proper shelter.
02:49Tents are made of cloth, of blankets, of anything people can get their hands on.
02:54So that's what people are most concerned with here in Gaza.
02:59There was an international UNICEF team of health and nutritional experts.
03:03They visited a hospital in the north, the Kamal Adwan Hospital. What did you find?
03:10There were awful scenes at Kamal Adwan Hospital, really.
03:14A UNICEF team composed of nutrition and health experts was able to reach the hospital on the 26th of November.
03:23They found a hospital that I'm not sure we can still call a hospital.
03:28For instance, the neonatal intensive care unit, there was impacts of bullets everywhere.
03:34And as a result of that, the neonatal ICU is currently out of use.
03:39At the time of our visit, there were 13 children that were taken care of in the hospital,
03:46most of them with very severe war trauma injuries.
03:50For instance, a 4-year-old girl with a head injury. She had been crushed under the rubble.
03:56An 11-year-old girl who had lost her eye and who also had a head injury.
04:01And a 13-year-old boy who had very, very severe injuries due to an explosion that same morning.
04:07And we actually ended up medically evacuating that boy in a UNICEF vehicle from Kamal Adwan Hospital to Shifa Hospital
04:16because there were no surgeons in Kamal Adwan who could save this boy's life.
04:24So we had to evacuate him to another hospital. Very dire situation.
04:28The hospital has already been under siege and under attacks for weeks and weeks now.
04:33They've run out of medical supplies, out of medicines, out of doctors.
04:38And they urgently need these supplies.
04:41All right. Thank you very much for giving us the picture.
04:44That's Rosalia Bolin. She's a communications specialist with the United Nations.
04:47Live from Rafah in Gaza.
04:50And just putting stories to some of those awful stats.