Humanitarian Aid to Gaza Stuck at the Border, WHO Head: Every Second We Wait to Lose Our Lives

Queues of vehicles carrying humanitarian aid in Raffah. (Twitter/@RowanAdel31)

JAKARTA - Senior officials from United Nations agencies have warned of the risk of blocking humanitarian aid for Gaza at the border, as an unprecedented humanitarian crisis looms over the region.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid are stuck at the Raffah crossing, the border between Gaza and Egypt, a condition regretted by WHO Head Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in his post on X, said aid was delayed for four days.

"Every second we wait for medical assistance to come in, we lose lives," he said as quoted on the UN website Thursday, October 19.

Senior UN officials continue to make diplomatic efforts to support humanitarian access to Gaza. UN Humanitarian Aid Chief Martin Griffiths is in Cairo where today he will accompany UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

In his post on X, Griffiths wrote that providing aid to the people of Gaza was "a matter of life or death".

"Doing this in a sustainable, seamless, and predictable manner is a humanitarian imperative," he added.

It said food, water, essential medicines, and health supplies were running low in the enclave, where more than a quarter of the population had been forced to flee since the start of the conflict.

Meanwhile, Head of the UN Palestine Refugee Agency Philippe Lazzarini said in an emergency meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), "an unprecedented disaster is happening before our eyes."

"Gaza is being strangled and the world seems to be losing its humanity," he said.

"Every hour we receive more and more calls for help from people throughout the Gaza Strip. Thousands of civilians have been killed in the last 12 days, including women and children," explained Lazzarini.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres underlined that assistance is urgently needed to respond to the most basic needs of the people of Gaza, the majority of whom are women and children.

"Too many lives and the fate of entire regions are in danger," he said.

The WHO said on Tuesday that of the 35 hospitals there, four were out of service "due to severe damage and attacks". Only eight of the 22 primary healthcare centers run by the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) are partially functional.