Health crisis looming as Gaza heads towards rainy season, warns WHO

The approach of winter and cold rains are set to worsen a public health crisis that already has a firm grip in the embattled Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

Recent water testing has shown there is a clear deterioration in the quality of water in the Palestinian enclave and diarrhea cases have surged, the United Nations health agency said on Tuesday, noting that the approach of winter threatens to exasperate the situation.

Much of Gaza has been destroyed during Israel’s genocidal war, and it remains under blockade, leaving much of its population without sufficient shelter and exposed to a lack of functioning infrastructure.

“Whilst we fail to provide people with the minimum quantities of water, water quality and water contamination remains a major issue,” said Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories.

Potential flooding resulting from winter rains “will [send] the sewage, the waste and contaminated water into the pl000aces where people sleep, cook and care for their loved ones,” she warned.

Testing of approximately 6,700 water samples over the first eight months of 2026 indicated that “microbiological contamination almost tripled,” she told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Gaza.

Contamination increased from under six percent in January to over 18 percent in August, the tests showed.

Cases of acute diarrhea have almost doubled since March, jumping from around 27,000 cases to over 48,000, Van de Weerdt noted.