Beyond Bullets and Bombs – Conflicts and Disease Spread

In Gaza, thousands have been killed, tens of thousands injured, and hundreds of thousands more are without shelter, clean water, or medical care.

“You have these horrible, horrible scenes playing out in many places,” says Avril Benoit, executive director of Medecins Sans Frontieres-USA, also known as MSF or Doctors Without Borders in English.

Humanitarian groups such as Doctors Without Borders have called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas so they can help innocent and helpless civilians caught in the conflict in Gaza.

People in Gaza are suffering horrific injuries, and without antibiotics and even the most basic of medical supplies, they are likely to develop deadly infections. The filthy and crowded conditions are helping the spread of diarrhea and respiratory disease. People are also developing skin infections such as scabies, and they’ve had to abandon treatment for day-to-day conditions from diabetes and high blood pressure to cancer chemotherapy.

MSF is struggling to help the people of Gaza, Benoit tells One World, One Health host Maggie Fox in this episode. While Gaza is, understandably, grabbing the headlines, more than six million Sudanese people are displaced and fighting malaria and malnutrition, while avoiding violence and slaughter. Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are living in unbearable conditions in the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh. Refugees are fleeing conflict in Ukraine and Syria as well. “We are really stretched very thin,” Benoit says. “Syria has fallen off our radar.”

Listen as Benoit talks about the horrors that conflict rain on populations, and the enduring effects that persist long after the bombs and shooting stop.