Some Gazans drinking sewage water and eating animal feed, says WHO regional chief

Some Gazans are now reduced to drinking sewage water and eating animal feed, the WHO's regional chief said Tuesday, pleading for increased aid access immediately to the besieged territory.

Hanan Balkhy, the World Health Organization's Eastern Mediterranean regional director, also warned that the war between Israel and Hamas had a knock-on impact on healthcare across the wider region.

And the impact on children will have severe lasting effects, the child health expert told AFP in an interview at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

Inside Gaza, "there are people who are now eating animal food, eating grass, they're drinking sewage water," she said.

"Children are barely able to eat, while the trucks are standing outside of Rafah."

The UN has long warned that famine is looming in Gaza, with 1.1 million people -- around half of the population -- facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA on Tuesday said access constraints "continue to undermine the safe delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza", and conditions "further deteriorated" in May.

A trickle of aid goes in mainly through the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.

The insecurity linked to the fighting and bombings, and roads often filled with debris, also hinders the distribution of aid.

Balkhy, who took office in February, said Gaza needed "peace, peace, peace", plus vastly increased aid-access by land.

After a recent visit to the Rafah crossing from Egypt into the southern Gaza Strip -- a vital conduit for aid that was closed by Israeli forces early last month -- she urged Israel to "open those borders".

Balkhy said Kerem Shalom was "not enough", and the frantic efforts at maritime corridors and air drops made little sense when far less costly and more effective land routes already existed and "the trucks are lined up" outside them.

Balkhy voiced particular frustration at the blocking of medical equipment deemed "dual use" -- items that Israel says could be used for military purposes.

"We're talking about ventilators, purification chemicals to clean water," the Saudi doctor said.

Balkhy stressed the dire needs of patients in Gaza, with as many as 11,000 critically ill and wounded people requiring medical evacuation.

"The patients that are coming out are showing some extremely complex traumas: compound fractures, multi-drug resistant organisms, very maimed children," she said.