Gazans fleeing Rafah say they now live ‘in misery’ next to garbage dump in Khan Younis
In Khan Younis, where Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University once stood, thousands of families say they’re being forced to live next to what has become a putrid temporary garbage dump.
Stretching 250 metres, the pile of garbage is longer than Seattle’s Space Needle is high. Flies, cockroaches and other bugs are inescapable, as is the unbearable foul smell.
“The situation is indescribable,” said Abdullah Tayseer, 48, who moved to Khan Younis with his wife and three children after fighting forced them from their temporary refuge in Rafah.
“All day long, we live in misery.”
UNRWA, the main United Nations agency in Gaza, estimated that as of Monday, more than 800,000 people had left Rafah since Israel began targeting the city in early May.
Israel said earlier this week it intended to broaden its operations in Rafah despite U.S. warnings about the risk of mass casualties. Many Gazans fled the southern city and made their way back to Khan Younis, about nine kilometres to the north, hoping to set up shelter at the Al-Aqsa University campus — only to find that it had been turned into one of the city’s main garbage dumps.
Abdullah Tayseer and Muhammad Abu Aser were both displaced from Rafah to Khan Younis amid a looming Israeli military incursion. Tayseer says he was forced to live near garbage.
Desperate, tired and faced with limited options, thousands set up camp near the dump, where garbage trucks coming from other camps within city boundaries regularly unload their contents.
The landfill used to be in Sofa, a town east of Khan Younis, but the city — which is responsible for waste collection — said it had to be moved to a more central area that would be easier to access as the war dragged on.
They chose the vacant university campus, where most of the buildings have been destroyed during the conflict.
‘The centre of the displaced’
Mohamed Al-Farra, an environmental engineer with the city, said the university was chosen because it was the largest space available at the time and “the furthest place from people.”
However, as more people continue to flood back into Khan Younis, the dump “is now the centre of the displaced,” Al-Farra told CBC News.
He said the trash greatly affects the spread of disease and vermin.
“The displaced tell us that they’ve seen roaches that they’ve never seen in their lives.”
Muhammad Abu Aser, 44, said he pitched his tent near the dump after he and his family were forced to leave Rafah because they couldn’t find anywhere else to go.
“We are forced to stay near garbage,” he told a freelance videographer working with CBC News in Gaza. “We’re just trying our best to live.”
Health consequences
People can face a number of health problems if they live in areas without proper garbage disposal because trash can contaminate air, soil and water, according to the World Health Organization. Vulnerable groups like children are at increased risk of adverse health outcomes.
A 2021 study found health consequences for people living near landfills, incinerators or dumping sites in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America included infectious diseases, respiratory conditions, cancer, birth defects and gastrointestinal illness.
Abu Aser and Tayseer both believe their proximity to the landfill is affecting their children’s health.
“The kids are all sick … their stomachs hurt,” said Tayseer, who is originally from the north part of the Gaza Strip.
Israel attacked Gaza following a Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on southern Israeli communities that killed 1,200 people and saw more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Gaza health authorities say Israel’s responding assault has killed more than 35,000 people, with thousands more feared buried under the rubble.
Aid groups say health conditions in the Gaza Strip are already dire as hundreds of thousands of people pack into the crowded, unsanitary camps, noting that women and children have particularly struggled with poor living conditions.
Al-Farra says the city will only be able to move the dump back to its original location if the war ends and access to the old site is restored.
Back at his tent, Abu Aser says he and his family have nowhere else to go until the war is over.
“We can’t handle a war,” he said. “We can’t handle anything anymore.”
Published at Tue, 21 May 2024 08:01:50 +0000
Louisiana passes bill to categorize abortion pills as controlled substances
Two abortion-inducing drugs could soon be reclassified as controlled and dangerous substances in Louisiana under a first-of-its-kind bill that received final legislative passage Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by the governor.
Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills,” say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions, though they cited only one example of that happening, in the state of Texas.
Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines, which they also use for other important reproductive health-care needs.
Passage of the bill comes as both abortion rights advocates and abortion opponents await a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on an effort to restrict access to mifepristone. The justices did not appear ready to limit access to the drug on the day they heard arguments.
WATCH l Explaining what the Supreme Court is deciding in mifepristone case:
U.S. Supreme Court justices heard arguments in a case that could limit access to the commonly used abortion drug mifepristone. Since the pandemic, more doctors have dispensed the drug through telemedicine but anti-abortion activists want that stopped.
In addition to inducing abortions, mifepristone and misoprostol have other common uses, such as treating miscarriages, inducing labour and stopping hemorrhaging.
Mifepristone was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000 after federal regulators deemed it safe and effective for ending early pregnancies. It’s used in combination with misoprostol, which the FDA has separately approved to treat stomach ulcers.
The drugs are not classified as controlled substances by the federal government because regulators do not view them as carrying a significant risk of misuse.
Vice-President Kamala Harris, in a social media post, described Louisiana’s bill as “absolutely unconscionable.”
Many doctors voice their opposition
The Republican-dominated legislature’s push to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol could possibly open the door for other Republican states with abortion bans that are seeking tighter restrictions on the drugs. Louisiana currently has a near-total abortion ban in place, applying both to surgical and medical abortions.
Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion, in most cases.
The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills by placing them on the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, a category that includes opioids. The classification would require doctors to have a specific licence to prescribe the drugs, and the drugs would have to be stored in certain facilities that in some cases could end up being located far from rural clinics.
Knowingly possessing the drugs without a valid prescription would carry a punishment including hefty fines and jail time. Language in the bill appears to carve out protections for pregnant women who obtain the drug without a prescription for their own consumption.
More than 200 doctors in the state signed a letter to lawmakers warning that the measure could produce a “barrier to physicians’ ease of prescribing appropriate treatment” and cause unnecessary fear and confusion among both patients and doctors.
Vice-President Kamala Harris reacts to Louisiana bill:
President Biden and I remain committed to defending access to reproductive health care, including medication abortion.<br><br>We will continue to fight back against extremists’ unconscionable attacks in Louisiana and across the nation. <a href=”https://t.co/jFe3KY0NRs”>https://t.co/jFe3KY0NRs</a>
—@VP
The physicians warn that any delay to obtaining the drugs could lead to worsening outcomes in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.
“This goes too far. We have not properly vetted this with the health-care community and I believe it’s going to lead to further harm down the road,” said Democratic Sen. Royce Duplessis, who voted against the measure. “There’s a reason we rank at the bottom in terms of maternal health outcomes, and this is why.”
Front Burner24:56U.S. abortion pill access threatened by Texas lawsuit
Bill sponsor Sen. Thomas Pressly pushed for an amendment to reclassify the drugs. Pressly said both the bill and the amendment were motivated by what happened to his sister Catherine Herring of Texas. In 2022, Herring’s husband slipped her seven misoprostol pills in an effort to induce an abortion without her knowledge or consent. There have been several cases similar to Herring’s reported by news outlets over the past 15 years, though none of those cited were in Louisiana.
“The purpose of bringing this legislation is certainly not to prevent these drugs from being used for legitimate health care purposes,” Pressly said. “I am simply trying to put safeguards and guardrails in place to keep bad actors from getting these medications.”
The state Senate voted 29-7, mainly along party lines, to pass the legislation.
In the 39-person Senate there are only five women, all of whom voted in favour of the bill.
The Louisiana legislation now heads to the desk of conservative Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. The governor, who was backed by former president Donald Trump during last year’s gubernatorial election, has indicated his support for the measure, remarking in a recent post on X, “You know you’re doing something right when @KamalaHarris criticizes you.”
Published at Fri, 24 May 2024 11:57:15 +0000
