JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - The fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is making a difference to the lives of over a million children, and improving overall access to food - but more aid still needs to enter. That's the assessment of two senior officials from the UN Children's Fund and the World Food Program, speaking in New York following a week-long visit to the enclave and the occupied West Bank.
The two agencies have brought more than 10,000 trucks of aid into Gaza since the October 10 truce between Israel and Hamas, representing some 80 per cent of all humanitarian cargo.
Three months later, 'the food security situation has improved and famine has been reversed,' Ted Chaiban, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations, told reporters Monday.
Carl Skau, WFP Deputy Executive Director, added that most families he met 'were eating at least once a day' - sometimes twice.
Commercial goods have reappeared in Gaza's markets, including vegetables, fruits, chicken and eggs. Recreational kits to help children heal from the stress and trauma of two years of war are now in their hands.
UNICEF and partners have provided more than 1.6 million people with clean drinking water and distributed blankets and winter clothes to 700,000. They have also restored essential life-saving paediatric intensive care services at embattled Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The second round of a Gaza-wide 'catch-up campaign' for routine childhood vaccinations is currently underway, while another 72 UNICEF-supported nutrition facilities have been established, bringing the total to 196.
'These gains matter,' said Chaiban. 'They show what is possible when the fighting pauses, political commitments are sustained and humanitarian access opens.'
WFP has also scaled up massively over the past 100 days, said Skau, speaking from Rome. Teams have reached more than a million people every month with full rations for the first time since the war began.
They are 'serving 400,000 hot meals every day and delivering school snacks to some 230,000 children in 250 temporary learning centres,' in addition to operating hundreds of distribution points and some 20 warehouses.
Other humanitarian organizations are bringing in tents, blankets, mattresses and other essentials thanks to WFP's shared logistics services.
The agency is also helping to facilitate more regular aid convoys and is expanding common storage facilities so that more aid can be positioned closer to the population. It has also ramped up cash support to roughly 60,000 households.
Although more aid is entering Gaza, quantities are not yet sufficient to meet the immense needs. Furthermore, 'the situation also remains extremely precarious and deadly for many children,' said Chaiban.
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