The health system in Gaza is on its knees and we cannot let an ambulance or a hospital bed go to waste, warned today World Health Organisationcalling for a ceasefire “now”.

“The situation is becoming more horrific by the day … literally beyond the unimaginable,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) he said Thursday night that only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were still functioning as well as they could.

“Children and people begging and crying for (to have) water, here we are, at a stage where the most current supplies, the most basic, are no longer accessible,” Lindmeier emphasized.

The estimate of water availability today in Gaza is “one or two liters of drinking water per day, for every use, not just for drinking,” he added.

Residents started cutting down the wooden poles with the telephone lines to have some wood to keep warm, or maybe cook,” said Lindmeier.

“Civilization is about to collapse,” Lindmeier warned.

According to the spokesman, a convoy was scheduled to bring medical supplies to the hospital today Al-‘Ahli ‘Arab in Gaza City and transport twelve patients to the south.

“We were made aware this morning that this mission had to be suspended due to the security situation,” the spokesman added.

“People caring for patients in the Gaza Strip do not have enough water and food to continue working,” he said.

“Patients are bleeding on the ground, trauma departments are like battlefields,” Lindmeier said.

“This brutality must stop. We need a ceasefire and we need it now,” he said.

Following an unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 in southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people according to Israeli officials, Israel responded with massive bombardments and a ground operation that have killed 17,177 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.

A large part of the Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble. According to the UN, 80% of the population has been displaced, and suffers from shortages of water, fuel, food and medicine, in addition to the risk of communicable diseases.

The head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa) today called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli strikes have killed more than 17,400 people in two months.

“I call on all member states to take immediate action to implement an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” said Philippe Lazzarini, according to a statement. “Calling for an end to the massacre of Palestinian lives in Gaza does not mean denying the heinous attacks of October 7 on Israel” by Hamas.