Dear Supporter,
COVID-19 Emergency Appeal: Palestine
As of 29th March 2020, there were 104 active cases of Covid-19 in Palestine, with one death.
Despite the relatively low number of cases, the World Health Organisation identified the risk in Palestine as very high, due to insufficient medical resources in the country compared to other countries. The lack of resources (including critical care beds and artificial ventilators) dramatically raises the mortality rate of COVID-19.
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, the United Nations had already stated that 2.4 million people in the occupied Palestinian territory are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection in 2020, that’s one in every two Palestinians. There is an ongoing blockade of Gaza since 2007, and there are continuing high rates of food insecurity, poverty, and unemployment, and thousands of families are still displaced since the war on Gaza in 2014.
It is in this difficult context that Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza are also in lockdown right now. Parents are already struggling to feed their families from limited resources, with the added impact of Covid-19.
Since 1st March 2020, Welfare Association (Taawon) is:
1. Working with hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza to help extend their stretched service provision and equip them as they prepare for the scale of infections and patient numbers to increase. For example we are working with the Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem to extend their ICU services.
2. Providing hundreds of families with hygiene kits to help keep them safe.
3. Implementing social distancing, hand washing and increasing the numbers of days to redeem food vouchers to prevent overcrowding, in our projects in the West Bank and Gaza, keeping families safe.
4. Preparing for our emergency food distribution projects in Gaza during Ramadan.
We will buy freshly harvested crops (vegetables, fruit, herbs) from Gaza farmers and package with chicken and eggs and distribute to hundreds of struggling families in Gaza, each week for five weeks. Providing funds and food to marginalised families.
