In the suffocating heat of Gaza’s displacement camps, children are being ravaged by skin diseases that spread rapidly through overcrowded tents with no clean water or medicine. Ten-year-old Alaa Obeid sits under torn canvas, her skin covered in red blisters, as her mother begs her not to scratch. Like thousands of others, she has no access to treatment, only pain.

Medical workers warn that the collapse of water and sanitation systems has created a deadly environment where scabies, chickenpox and severe skin infections spread unchecked. With 45 water wells destroyed and no functioning sewage network, families struggle to find even enough water to drink, let alone maintain basic hygiene. Malnutrition, insect bites and suffocating heat make recovery impossible, leaving children vulnerable to infections that worsen with every scratch.

Mothers describe sleepless nights as their children cry from constant itching, while doctors stress that treatment requires medicine, soap and proper nutrition, none of which exist under siege. In some tents, temperatures are described as “oven-like”, turning every blister into a wound that refuses to heal.

Amid this suffering, Gaza’s children continue to ask the simplest of questions, when they will return home. With clean water exhausted and hospitals paralysed, what lingers is not only disease but a suffocating sense of abandonment, as if the Strip itself is struggling to breathe.