WHO: 'Slightly' more food available in Gaza but famine still looms

The availability of food in the Gaza Strip has very slightly improved, though the risk of famine in the besieged Palestinian territory remains, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

“The food situation has a little bit improved. There’s a bit more food,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, told a press briefing in Geneva via video-link from Jerusalem.

Compared to a few months ago, “definitely there is more basic food, more wheat, but also a little bit more diversified food on the market”, he said.

This was “not just in the south (but) also in the north”, where people have been surviving on fewer calories per day than those contained than a can of beans.

Peeperkorn stressed that local food production in the densely populated Gaza Strip -- such as fruit, vegetables and fish -- had been “destroyed” by the war.

The threat of famine had “absolutely not” gone away, he said.


AFP