The health system in the Gaza Strip is “on its knees”, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned yesterday, addressing the UN Security Council, stressing that half of the 36 hospitals in the Palestinian enclave are no longer functioning “at all”.

“It is impossible to describe the situation on the ground: corridors of hospitals piled up with wounded, sick and bleeding people” while “tens of thousands of people have taken refuge in hospitals” for protection, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that there have been recorded “over 250 attacks” on the health sector (hospitals, clinics, ambulances, patients, medical and nursing staff…) in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since the outbreak of war on October 7, triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli territory. He also spoke of 25 attacks against the health sector in Israel.

“The best way to support health workers in the Gaza Strip and the people they serve is to give them the means they need to provide care: medicine, medical equipment and fuel for hospital generators,” he added. , calling for an increase in humanitarian aid reaching the besieged enclave via the Rafah border post and repeating the UN’s repeated call for a “ceasefire”.

“I understand what the children in Gaza are going through because I went through the same when I was a child,” added the WHO director-general, who hails from Ethiopia’s Tigray state.

“The sound of gunfire and the whistling of shells in the air, the smell of smoke after they hit, the tracers in the night, the fear, the pain,” he described. On the other hand, he denounced the “barbaric” attacks of October 7 and asked, once again, for the release of the Hamas hostages.

While the Security Council remains deeply divided over the file and has been unable to speak with one voice since the war broke out, the WHO chief also called for its reform.

“I have long considered that the Security Council no longer fulfills the role for which it was created,” namely the defense of “peace and security” on a global scale, he insisted.

The director of the Palestinian Red Crescent, Marwan Jilani, who spoke via video link, for his part called on the member states of the SA to “do everything they can to prevent new deaths and new suffering”.

He mainly denounced the situation at the Al-Quds (“Jerusalem”) hospital in Gaza City, which according to the Red Crescent was targeted by Israeli special forces fire yesterday.

“I was preparing to inform the Security Council about the critical shortage of fuel, food and water, but frankly, our main concern now is the immediate threat to the lives of the wounded and sick and the tens of thousands of civilians” who have taken refuge in the hospital, he underlined .

“You are urged to act urgently to prevent another potential massacre.”

The Security Council observed, at the beginning of its session, a minute of silence paying tribute to the victims of the attack by Hamas on Israel (1,200 dead, according to the revised count of the Israeli authorities), to the civilians killed in the shelling in the Gaza Strip ( over 11,000 dead, according to the Hamas ministry), as well as to the journalists and UN agency workers who have died since the war broke out (the latter have exceeded a hundred, according to Dr. Tedros).