Jaundice afflicting malnourished Yarmouk residents as blockade endures

NO WAY OUT: An estimated 250 people are suffering from jaundice in Yarmouk camp due to a lack of proper nutrition inside and a regime blockade outside it, reported the UK-based daily Al-Hayat on Monday.

At least 50 people have already died of the disease, the paper reported.

Yarmouk has been completely encircled by regime forces for over two years, with residents, such as the woman peering into a food package above, almost completely dependent on the irregular delivery of humanitarian aid.

Starvation in the camp, located just south of Damascus, is ongoing, with a recent report by the UK-based pro-Palestinian monitoring group Action Based For Palestinians of Syria finding that at least 165 Syrians have been killed as a result of the blockade.

Last Friday, desperate civilians surrounded a truck carrying bread into the camp for distribution, while others piled on top of the car in hopes of retrieving the precious food, according to videos taken by activists in the camp.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) announced last April that Yarmouk Camp’s population had dropped to 18,000 residents from 160,000 prior to the outbreak of the war.

Camp residents, the majority of whom remain are Palestinian, “suffer from inhuman living conditions, a deprivation of food, water and medicine in light of the closing of medical clinics and schools, the destruction of streets and buildings, and the cutting off of all access to the outside world,” said UNRWA in its statement.

The pain of Yarmouk camp “has become synonymous with the deep suffering experienced by Palestinian refugees and Syrian civilians as a result of the Syrian revolution,” UNRWA said.

-February 9, 2015

-Photo courtesy of Yarmouk Camp News

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