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Over 83% of people with disabilities in Gaza lack access to assistive devices: UNRWA

Iran Press TV

Saturday, 16 August 2025 11:04 AM

More than 83 percent of the Palestinian people with disabilities in the Gaza Strip do not have the assistive devices they need, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency in Palestine (UNRWA).

The UNRWA said on Friday that assistive devices needed by people with disabilities include wheelchairs, hearing aids and other tools, as well as the batteries for these devices, which are in very short supply.

According to the Global Protection Cluster, Palestinian people with disabilities in Gaza face "immense challenges" around the clock and require others' assistance in accessing their essential needs.

The lack of assistive devices makes it exponentially more difficult - if not impossible - for them to access healthcare and food, it said.

"They lack everything - food, assistive devices, healthcare," it added.

UNRWA estimates that one in four Gazans has a new disability as a result of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, which requires treatment and rehabilitation.

Ammar Dwaik, director-general of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, said that an average of 15 children are newly disabled each day. At least 35,000 people have "significant hearing damage" as a result of repeated explosions. According to some rights groups, Gaza has the largest number of child amputees in modern history.

"In a normal situation, people with disabilities suffer the most. And in wartime, of course, the situation is heightened further," said Muhannad Salah Al-Azzeh, member of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, at a public dialogue this week in Geneva.

Al-Azzeh pointed out that for people with mobility impairments who do not have families or friends willing to retrieve life-saving aid for them, they may simply be unable to reach it.

However, according to Hector Sharp, a representative from UNRWA present at the meeting in Geneva, reaching life-saving aid has become a life-threatening prospect for even the healthy ones in Gaza.

The UNRWA representative in Geneva noted that for people with disabilities, it is almost impossible.

"Reaching [the distribution points] and needing to physically compete for this aid is difficult for all Palestinians, but all the more so for people with disabilities to whom aid is being effectively placed out of reach," Sharp said.

The US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Fund, for example, has only a handful of distribution points throughout the Gaza Strip since it bypasses all established UN and NGO operations, forcing people to walk long distances in the hopes of receiving meager amounts of food.