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Khan Younis, Gaza Strip In the courtyard of Nasser’s hospital, Iman Abu Jame sits next to her six-year-old son, Yasser, looking at his weak, sickly body, trying to understand what has happened to him.
Yasser’s skin is covered in angry rashes and burning sores that doctors can’t explain. His body is weak from hunger.
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For 32-year-old Iman, Yasser’s illness cannot be separated from the suffering caused by Israel’s more than two-and-a-half-year war in Gaza.
Their family lives in a small tent in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, an area populated by fellow refugees, which Iman describes as a disaster.
The heat is fading. Garbage piles up around the tents. Contaminated water is available to many households. Insects are rats crawl through the mass camps where thousands of refugees are crammed with no toilets and little food.
Israel places strict restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid in Gaza despite the end of the October ceasefire that was supposed to see the amount of aid flowing into the Palestinian territories rise.
Before the war, Yasser was healthy, Iman says. Then came the famine.
Months of severe hunger and rising prices made it impossible for the family to get even the most basic food. Malnutrition weakened his body at first. Then illness came.
“I have never seen a disease like this in my life,” Iman told Al Jazeera. “But in this hospital there are children suffering from the same kind of rash.”
Doctors have so far failed to diagnose Yasser’s illness. New symptoms continue to appear on his body as his strength fades.
“Malnutrition was the beginning,” says his mother. “… Her father doesn’t work, and we can’t provide food, milk or vegetables. We can’t afford medicine, that’s why I brought her to the hospital.”
“He was asking for food like any other child, but we had nothing to give him,” he added.
Children who are most vulnerable
As the family continues to struggle inside the camp, disease spreads rapidly in the overcrowded tents, where disease spreads easily among the children who are already weak and starving.
The story of Yasser is getting worse in Gaza.
Medical teams from Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) say skin diseases are spreading at an alarming rate among refugee families forced to live in overcrowded camps.
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 17,000 ectoparasitic diseases – caused by parasites that live on or under the human skin – were recorded in 2026 alone.
In April, MAP screened 7,017 people in six medical facilities in Gaza. Of the 1,325 people diagnosed with skin disease, more than 62 percent were children.
Among them were 168 children under the age of two, 259 between the ages of three and five, and 245 between the ages of six and 12.
At MAP’s Solidarity Polyclinic in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, measles accounted for nearly a third of the infectious diseases recorded in April. The hospital has helped more than 77,000 people in its first year as health care in Gaza continues to collapse due to war, displacement and lack of supplies and equipment.
Dr Rana Abu Jalal, who works at the hospital, says doctors are seeing a “significant increase” in skin diseases, especially scabies, and they often develop into chronic infections and painful ulcers.
He said: “What concerns me the most is how it affects children. They are the most vulnerable.”
He said the spread of disease was driven by overcrowded tents, unsafe water, poor air quality and lack of sanitation.
He said: “Families tell us every day how they are trying to cope. But this cannot happen.”
Disease spreads
In Khan Younis, Dr Alaa Ouda, who works at a MAP-supported hospital that operates in six refugee camps, says he now treats 70 to 80 patients a day who suffer from scabies, fleas, insect bites and fungal infections.
“The flies that we see are carrying scabies,” he said. And there is another type of insect that we don’t know about yet.
He also said that fungal infections of the head of girls are spreading rapidly in the camps.
“Once a single case appears, it spreads quickly because of overcrowding, sanitation and germs everywhere,” he said.
But despite the increase in cases, the cure is almost gone.
“The matter is no longer needed,” said the doctor. “There is no problem.”
Permethrin, one of the main treatments for scabies, is no longer available, he added.
Mohammed Fathi, a community health worker at MAP, says many families have stopped seeking help altogether because medicine is not available and children are sent back to the dangerous places where they got sick in the first place.
“People have lost hope,” he said. “Even if the treatment is there for a while, the underlying cause doesn’t change.”
