DUBAI: Rats are spreading rapidly through Gaza’s flooded displacement camps, thriving amid sewage overflow, garbage accumulation and overcrowded shelters, and heightening fears of rodent-borne disease as winter rains worsen living conditions for thousands of Palestinians.
Aid agencies warn that the collapse of sanitation systems, combined with restricted access to pest control materials, has created ideal conditions for infestations across camps and damaged neighborhoods, turning already precarious shelters into vectors of serious public health risk.
“Much of Gaza’s sewage infrastructure was destroyed during the war, leading to sewage flooding streets and areas between tents,” a spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, told Arab News.
In agricultural displacement areas such as Al-Mawasi, families are reverting to rudimentary sewage disposal methods, UNRWA said, further accelerating the spread of rodents and increasing exposure to contaminated water and waste.
These conditions have already triggered suspected cases of leptospirosis, a potentially serious zoonotic disease commonly spread through water contaminated with rodent urine.
