The plight of displaced families in Gaza has worsened under the scorching summer heat, with children increasingly suffering from severe skin allergies caused by extreme temperatures, dirty sand, and a crippling shortage of medicines.

In makeshift tents, parents struggle to provide even the simplest care. “We bathe the children to ease the allergies, but the symptoms return quickly,” said displaced mother Faiza Abu Zaher. “The heat on one hand, hunger and high prices on the other, everything weighs heavily on our children.”

Health clinics, overwhelmed and depleted, can no longer offer proper treatment. “We live in what feels like a furnace, and our children do not have a normal life,” said Umm al-Baraa, whose son’s condition worsens daily. Others, like Manar Abu Labda, are forced to bathe their children in salty seawater due to the scarcity of fresh water, which only aggravates the skin conditions. “My daughters suffer every day from painful allergies, and the itching never leaves them. The tents are collapsing, they do not shield us from heat in summer nor cold in winter.”

Families repeatedly plead with health centres but find empty shelves, as the Israeli blockade continues to choke off medical supplies and hygiene products. Manar issued a desperate call to the international community: “We hope the world sees our suffering, sends aid, and pressures to end the blockade and aggression that deprive us of even the most basic rights to life.”

With water sources halted and humanitarian aid restricted, over two million Palestinians are left at risk of thirst and illness. Rising temperatures have turned Gaza’s camps into furnaces, worsening an already dire humanitarian catastrophe where children are among the first to suffer.