Latest news with #HealthMinistry
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Health
- Reuters
Two people have died from West Nile virus in Italy this year
MILAN, July 23 (Reuters) - Two people had died and eight others had been infected with the West Nile virus in Italy so far this year, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday. The virus, which mostly spreads to people through mosquito bites, can cause severe, life-threatening illness in about 1 in 150 people who are infected, according to the World Health Organization. Italy detected the virus for first time in 1998, the Ministry said. A cluster of infections has seen seven cases in the region of Lazio, which includes Rome, since the beginning of the year, the ministry said in a report on its website. Italian media reported on Sunday that an 82-year-old woman had died at a hospital in the province of Latina, south of Rome, after being infected. The virus has also been detected in the northern regions of Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont and Lombardy, as well as on the island of Sardinia and the southeastern Puglia region. The West Nile virus is becoming more common in Europe and was found in May for the first time in mosquitoes collected in Britain. In the United States it caused about 2,500 cases and 182 deaths in 2023, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Gulf Today
3 hours ago
- Health
- Gulf Today
Israeli forces kill over 1,000 aid-seekers in Gaza since May: UN
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip, mostly near aid sites run by an American contractor, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday. More than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Its count doesn't distinguish between militants and civilians, but the ministry says that more than half of the dead are women and children. The UN and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes killed 25 people across Gaza, according to local health officials. Desperation is mounting in the Palestinian territory of more than 2 million, which experts say is at risk of famine because of Israel's blockade and nearly two-year offensive. A breakdown of law and order has led to widespread looting and contributed to chaos and violence around aid deliveries. Men walk carrying sacks of flour in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. AFP Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid - without providing evidence of widespread diversion - and blames UN agencies for failing to deliver food it has allowed in. The military says it has only fired warning shots near aid sites. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed American contractor, rejected what it said were "false and exaggerated statistics' from the United Nations. The Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, said Tuesday that 101 people, including 80 children, have died in recent days from starvation. The deaths could not be independently verified, but UN officials and major international aid groups say the conditions for starvation exist in Gaza. During hunger crises, people can die from malnutrition or from common illnesses or injuries that the body is not strong enough to fight. Israel eased a 2½-month blockade in May, allowing a trickle of aid in through the longstanding UN-run system and the newly created GHF. Aid groups say it's not nearly enough. Dozens of Palestinians lined up Tuesday outside a charity kitchen in Gaza City, hoping for a bowl of watery tomato soup. The lucky ones got small chunks of eggplant. As supplies ran out, people holding pots pushed and shoved to get to the front. Smoke rises after an explosion in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, on Tuesday. Reuters Nadia Mdoukh, a pregnant woman who was displaced from her home and lives in a tent with her husband and three children, said she worries about being shoved or trampled on, and about heat stroke as daytime temperatures hover above 90 F (32 C). "I do it for my children," she said. "This is famine - there is no bread or flour.' The UN World Food Program says Gaza's hunger crisis has reached "new and astonishing levels of desperation.' Ross Smith, the agency's director for emergencies, told reporters Monday that nearly 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and a third of Gaza's population is going without food for multiple days in a row. MedGlobal, a charity working in Gaza, said five children as young as 3 months had died from starvation in the past three days. "This is a deliberate and human-made disaster," said Joseph Belliveau, its executive director. "Those children died because there is not enough food in Gaza and not enough medicines, including IV fluids and therapeutic formula, to revive them.' Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians, including aid seekers, killed in Israeli attacks, according to medics, at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on Tuesday. Reuters The charity said food is in such short supply that its own staff members suffer dizziness and headaches. Of the 1,054 people killed while trying to get food since late May, 766 were killed while heading to sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the UN human rights office. The others were killed when gunfire erupted around UN convoys or aid sites. Thameen al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN rights office, says its figures come from "multiple reliable sources on the ground,' including medics, humanitarian and human rights organizations. He said the numbers were still being verified according to the office's strict methodology. Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces regularly fire toward crowds of thousands of people heading to the GHF sites. The military says it has only fired warning shots, and GHF says its armed contractors have only fired into the air on a few occasions to try to prevent stampedes. A joint statement from 28 Western-aligned countries on Monday condemned the "the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians.' Demonstrators hold signs, during a protest demanding an end to the war in Gaza and the release of all hostages, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Tuesday. Reuters "The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,' read the statement, which was signed by the United Kingdom, France and other countries friendly to Israel. "The Israeli government's denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.' Israel and the United States rejected the statement, blaming Hamas for prolonging the war by not accepting Israeli terms for a ceasefire and the release of hostages abducted in the fighter-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the fighting. Hamas has said it will release the remaining hostages only in return for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal. Israel says it will keep fighting until Hamas has been defeated or disarmed. Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people Tuesday across Gaza, according to local health officials. One strike hit tents sheltering displaced people in the built-up seaside Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, killing at least 12 people, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the casualties. The Israeli military said that it wasn't aware of such a strike by its forces. Israeli activists gather at HaBima Square for a protest march towards the Israeli defence ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday denouncing the ongoing food shortage and forced displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. AFP The dead included three women and three children, the hospital director, Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiya, told The Associated Press. Thirty-eight other Palestinians were wounded, he said. An overnight strike that hit crowds of Palestinians waiting for aid trucks in Gaza City killed eight, hospitals said. At least 118 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. "A bag of flour covered in blood and death," said Mohammed Issam, who was in the crowd and said some people were run over by trucks in the chaos. "How long will this humiliation continue?' The Israeli military had no immediate comment on that strike. Israel blames the deaths of Palestinian civilians on Hamas, because the fighters operate in densely populated areas. Israel renewed its offensive in March with a surprise bombardment after ending an earlier ceasefire. Talks on another truce have dragged on for weeks despite pressure from US President Donald Trump. Hamas-led fighters abducted 251 people in the Oct. 7 attack, and killed around 1,200 people. Fewer than half of the 50 hostages still in Gaza are believed to be alive. Associated Press
Mada
4 hours ago
- Health
- Mada
Hospitals receiving 120 malnutrition patients daily in Gaza, Health Ministry official says
Around 120 patients suffering from malnutrition are reaching Gaza's hospitals daily, Zaher al-Wahidy, director of the Health Ministry's Health Information Unit in Gaza, told Mada Masr this week. Many of the cases flooding into hospitals are children under five years of age, he said. At least 101 people, 80 of them children, have died from hunger and malnutrition-related complications as a result of Israel's starvation policies, Gaza's Health Ministry said on Tuesday. Eighteen of the deaths were recorded in a 24-hour period at the beginning of the week, as the impacts of mass-starvation conditions accelerate amid a severe scarcity of food in markets. Photojournalist Bashir Abu Shaar had to put his camera up for sale to afford a bag of flour for his family. It was his only source of income, but he said he 'could no longer bear to watch his children starve.' Flour and other food supplies have nearly vanished from Gaza's markets. The shortage has caused prices to soar to 'unbelievable' levels, said Khalil Daher, who was seeking flour in Gaza City's markets earlier this week. He told Mada Masr that traders are selling flour at rates surpassing even those seen during the 'first famine,' the weeks of hunger people lived through during Israel's siege on the strip in 2023, in the early months of its genocidal war. Prices for a kilogram of flour have reached nearly 150 shekels (around US$45), with some reports of a 1 kilogram sack being sold for over $100. Dhaher stood helpless among hundreds of other residents of Gaza City being starved after the trader he used to buy flour from ran out of supplies. He searched the markets for another source but came up empty-handed, unable to ease the days-long hunger his children have endured. For others, even seeking flour isn't an option. Eman Salha and her three children ran out of flour some time ago, and haven't had bread for two weeks. She told Mada Masr that their household has been plunged into destitution, since they have lost their only source of income to the war. To feed her children, Salha now relies on lentils and pasta cooked over a wood fire. For Barakat Eid, who hasn't eaten in three days, hunger has left his body so frail he can no longer walk to search for food for himself and his children. He, too, said he can't afford flour to 'quiet his children's empty stomachs.' Scarcity and unbridled inflation have left a majority of Gaza's residents dependent on food aid, the World Food Programme said on Sunday. But with Israeli settlers and soldiers sabotaging aid convoys before they can reach their destinations in the strip, and its military blocking humanitarian organizations' access, obtaining food aid is a highly dangerous process. Small quantities of aid are distributed daily at sites managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, located within Israeli-occupied militarized combat zones in Rafah, Khan Younis and central Gaza. Thousands of people wait at different sites each day, with only a few able to obtain food parcels as Israeli troops and aircraft open frequent fire on the crowds. Over 1,000 people have been killed while trying to get food since the GHF began operating at the end of May. Others have been crushed to death by the degree of crowding. Accessing the small quantities of United Nations food aid entering Gaza from the north likewise became fatal for more than 80 Palestinians this week, as Israeli forces opened fire on the crowds of thousands who had come to obtain supplies from a convoy of WFP trucks. The quantities of aid are insufficient after four months of the siege. Mohamed al-Arabid, a Gaza City resident, managed to secure ten kilograms of flour last week from a truck that reached northern Gaza. The supply only lasted his large family a few days, he said. 'That's the reality for decent people,' he told Mada Masr. 'Even though I got it from the grip of death, it's unbearable to think you have flour while others have none. You wish you had a whole truck to distribute to people.' One flour vendor who was selling his stock at high prices told Mada Masr he had obtained the supplies from the deadly GHF centers. He risks his life to get the flour and could 'be killed at any moment' in the process, he said, justifying the rates. 'Or else I'd keep it for my family.' Price hikes and hoarding led tens of thousands of Gaza's residents to take to the markets on Sunday to protest trading practices — particularly for basic staples like flour, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam reported. Ibrahim Ahmed, one of the protesters, told Mada Masr that he joined the demonstration at the Nasr market in northern Gaza City to denounce traders' exploitation. He said profiteering off people's need has peaked in recent days and blamed the dire situation on the closure of border crossings and the tightening of the blockade. On Saturday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said it has food supplies in storage that could sustain the entire population of Gaza for more than three months. But the aid remains stuck in warehouses — including in Egypt's Arish City — pending clearance for entry. The agency repeated its call to open the crossings and lift the blockade on the strip. Gaza's population has now entered the most severe conditions of food insecurity, or Phase 5 famine as per the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the Health Ministry's information unit director said on Monday. He noted that around 5,500 patients were recorded suffering with malnutrition in May, rising to 6,300 in June, warning that the risks are especially high for mothers, breastfeeding women and the elderly.
Gulf Today
5 hours ago
- Health
- Gulf Today
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 21 more Palestinians
Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 21 people late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday. More than half of those killed were women and children, health authorities said. More than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. Its count doesn't distinguish between fighters and civilians, but the ministry says that more than half of the dead are women and children. The UN and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties. Desperation is mounting in the Palestinian territory of more than 2 million, which experts say is at risk of famine because of Israel's blockade and nearly two-year offensive. A breakdown of law and order has led to widespread looting and contributed to chaos and violence around aid deliveries. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip, mostly near aid sites run by an American contractor, the UN human rights office said Tuesday. Debris lies at the site of an overnight Israeli air strike on a house, in Gaza City, on Wednesday. Reuters More than 100 human rights groups and charities signed a letter published Wednesday demanding more aid for Gaza and warning of grim conditions causing starvation. The Israeli military said in a statement Wednesday that forces were operating in Gaza City, as well as in northern Gaza. It said without elaborating that in Jabaliya, an area hard-hit in multiple rounds of fighting, an air strike killed "a number of' Hamas fighters. Troops struck roughly 120 targets throughout Gaza over the past day, including fighter cells, tunnels and booby-trapped structures, among others, the military said. One Israeli strike hit a house Tuesday in the northwestern side of Gaza City, killing at least 12 people, according to the Shifa Hospital, which received the casualties. The dead included six children and two women, according to the Health Ministry's casualty list. Another strike hit an apartment in the Tal al-Hawa area in northern Gaza, killing at least six people. Among the dead were three children and two women, including one who was pregnant. Eight others were wounded, the ministry said. A third strike hit a tent in the Naser neighbourhood in Gaza City late Tuesday and killed three children, Shifa Hospital said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes. It blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the Palestinian group Hamas operate from populated areas. Palestinians inspect the damage, including a destroyed ambulance, around a house hit in an Israeli strike a day earlier in western Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. AFP In the letter issued Wednesday by 109 human rights and charity groups, they warned of a dire situation pushing more people toward starvation. They said they were watching their own colleagues, as well as the Palestinians they serve, "waste away.' The letter slammed Israel for what it said were restrictions on aid into the war-ravaged territory. It lamented "massacres' at food distribution points, which have seen chaos and violence in recent weeks as desperation has risen. "The government of Israel's restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death,' the letter said. The letter called for aid to be scaled up as well as for a ceasefire. ` Israel says that it has allowed the entry of thousands of trucks since May and blames aid groups for not consistently delivering goods. Associated Press
New Straits Times
6 hours ago
- Health
- New Straits Times
Dzulkefly: MOH committed to resolving healthcare staffing shortage
PAPAR: The Health Ministry (MOH) has prepared briefing notes and a memorandum to be presented to the Cabinet to address the ongoing shortage of personnel in the national healthcare sector, said its minister, Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad. He said the ministry is committed to resolving the filling of 4,352 positions to meet the healthcare needs of the people, as announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim yesterday. "We are aware that the shortage of personnel is a real issue and must be addressed. I am personally committed to expediting the appointment process for those currently on contract to be absorbed into permanent positions without having to wait by cohort. "We are identifying ways to reduce this deficit or close the gap, and to implement redistribution or resolve the long-standing issue of maldistribution. I have inherited this situation, but I am determined to address it within a reasonable timeframe," he said. He was speaking to reporters after attending the Community Engagement Day event at the National Information Dissemination Centre in Kampung Langkuas, Kinarut, near here yesterday. Also present were Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil, Communications Ministry secretary-general Datuk Mohamad Fauzi Md Isa, and MOH secretary-general Datuk Seri Suriani Ahmad. When announcing government initiatives for Malaysians yesterday, the Prime Minister said the government would expedite the filling of 4,352 positions at healthcare facilities, including the appointment of contract doctors this year, in response to urgent needs in the country's healthcare sector. However, Dzulkefly clarified that the responsibility for position appointments does not lie with the ministry but rather under the jurisdiction of the Public Service Department (JPA) and the Public Services Commission (SPA), though he is confident these agencies are committed to fulfilling the staffing needs of the health sector. He added that the MOH is also striving to boost the morale of healthcare staff by maintaining the 42-hour work week for nurses, housemen (PPS), and medical officers (MOs). - BERNAMA
