This past weekend, heavy rain brought a sand embankment crashing down onto a tent in central Gaza, killing five people, three of them children. In a separate incident, a baby reportedly drowned. 

This is what happens when families have nowhere safe to go. Like so many in Gaza, they had been left homeless by Israel’s bombardment and were living on unstable ground, exposed to the first heavy rains of the season. 

And the rains have only just begun. 1.4 million people, almost two-thirds of Gaza’s population, are living in tents or makeshift shelters. More than 100,000 have already been hit by flooding, sleeping on soaked mattresses in freezing cold, beside water mixed with sewage. 

Our own clinics, which are run from tents, are flooding too, and patients are being cut off from care. Our medical teams know what comes next: hypothermia, pneumonia and waterborne disease. Children will be hit hardest. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. For more than three years, aid into Gaza has been severely restricted. Despite the so-called “ceasefire”, tents, medicine, fuel and the equipment to repair clinics are still blocked at Gaza’s borders. The Israeli authorities are not letting them in, in breach of international humanitarian law. 

The UK Government has not done enough to end this crisis. It must act now, before winter claims more lives. 

Doctors of the World has worked in Gaza since 1995, providing more than 1 million consultations since the genocide began. Right now, our teams are pumping out floodwater from our clinics, reinforcing tents and digging drainage channels just to keep seeing patients. They cannot hold winter back alone. 

We are calling on the UK Government to press the Israeli authorities to end its unlawful restrictions on aid into Gaza, starting now with the immediate, unimpeded entry of shelter materials, medical supplies, fuel, and the equipment needed to repair clinics and water systems. 

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