Dangerous skin diseases spreading among Gaza children

Deir el Balah, Palestinian Territories: Wafaa Elwan s five year old son cannot sleep in the Gaza tent city where she and her seven children shelter, b...

Deir el-Balah, Palestinian Territories: Wafaa Elwan's five-year-old son cannot sleep in the Gaza tent city where she and her seven children shelter, but it is not the guns of war that cause his daily nightmare.

"My son can't sleep through the night because he can't stop scratching his body," the anxious mother said.

The boy has white and red blotches over his feet and legs, and more under his T-shirt. He is one of many Gazans suffering from skin infections ranging from scabies to chicken pox, lice, impetigo and other debilitating rashes.

More than 150,000 people in the Palestinian territory have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions into which displaced Gazans have been forced since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7, according to the World Health Organization.

"We sleep on the ground, on sand where worms come out underneath us," said Elwan. Her family is one of thousands living on a sandy patch near the sea close to the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah.