Humanitarian health needs in the region include trauma and emergency healthcare services for thousands of injured individuals. This includes early post-operative rehabilitation for those affected. In addition, there is a critical shortage of trauma and emergency care drugs, medical disposables, laboratory supplies, medical kits, and equipment that need to be procured. Furthermore, there is a need for electricity or fuel supplies at key hospitals and for ambulance services to continue providing life-saving services.
Access to essential primary and secondary healthcare services is vital for the general affected population, especially for women, children, chronic illness patients, and survivors of gender-based violence. Additional bed capacity and human resources are required to support case management. Disease surveillance is also necessary due to the significant risk of outbreaks caused by a lack of adequate water and sanitation and overcrowded shelters. Mental health and psychosocial support are essential for the highly traumatized population.
To address these needs, priority response activities include maximizing and supporting service delivery capacity at pre-hospital, hospital, and post-hospital levels of trauma care. Providing early access to multidisciplinary postoperative care and rehabilitation services for the injured is crucial. Emergency Medical Teams need to be deployed to key hospitals and three field hospitals need to be established. Providing fuel to key hospitals, primary healthcare centers, and ambulance services is also a priority.
Additionally, there is a need to maximize and support existing capacity in the provision of essential primary and secondary healthcare services. This includes treating adult and childhood illnesses, managing non-communicable diseases, providing preventive and curative nutrition interventions, sexual and reproductive health services, maternal, newborn, and child health services, and clinical management of gender-based violence survivors. It is also important to re-establish referral pathways outside of the Gaza Strip and scale up early warning alert and response, as well as disease surveillance and diagnostic capacity for communicable diseases. Providing mental health and psychosocial support to the affected population and supplying psychotropic medicines to those with mental health disorders is also part of the priority response activities. Lastly, maintaining essential supplies at the community and facility levels is critical for addressing the ongoing humanitarian health needs in the region.