World Health Organization

As New Year's Eve festivities draw near, an expert has warned that "caution should be exercised" in crowded celebrations in light of the new JN.1 sub-variant of COVID-19 spread.

Israeli forces pressed on with intensified attacks in the Gaza Strip's biggest southern city and a central refugee camp, after the territory's Hamas-run health ministry reported more than 21,000 people had been killed in 11 weeks of war.

Israel has announced that it is stepping up operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The UN has again emphasized that the incessant strikes on the Palestinian territory have led to a critical deterioration of the situation of the civilian population.

World Health Organization staff visited Monday a Gaza hospital receiving casualties from deadly strikes on a refugee camp, hearing distressing stories of entire families killed and seeing dying children.

The Hamas-run health ministry said at least 70 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the "toll is likely to rise" as many families were thought to be in the area at the time of the strike.

With a surge in viral infections seen amid the ongoing cold and damp winter weather, an infectious diseases specialist has warned of a "virus potpourri," as the number of patients in emergency units with upper respiratory tract infections has doubled in recent days. 

The U.N. Security Council on Friday demanded aid be rushed to Gaza "at scale" as the head of the World Health Organization warned of a looming famine in the besieged Palestinian territory.

As Israeli bombs rained down on targets across Gaza, members of the U.N.'s top peacemaking council demanded "immediate, safe and unhindered" deliveries of life-saving aid.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that Northern Gaza has no more functioning hospitals, The New York Times reported.

The WHO Director-General described scenes of horror witnessed by aid workers in the ruins of two partially destroyed medical facilities.

The northern Gaza were left without a functional hospital due to a lack of fuel, staff, and supplies, a senior official from the World Health Organization stated.

"There are actually no functional hospitals left in the north," Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in Gaza, said in an online press conference thursday.

Against the backdrop of dog attack incidents, experts have raised concerns over the growing stray animal population in Türkiye, suggesting that it could equal the country's human population by 2030.