(UN News)* — Gaza’s health system for mothers and newborns has been “decimated”, the UN said on Thursday [], with Israeli attacks destroying almost all hospitals, cutting off medical supplies and driving sharp rises in maternal deaths, miscarriages and newborn fatalities amid mass displacement and hunger.
United Nations | Medical equipment destroyed in an attack on a hospital in Gaza.
According to the UN human rights office (OHCHR), more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October 2023, when Palestinian armed groups attacked communities in southern Israel, triggering Israel’s full-scale military assault on the enclave.
OHCHR said 94 per cent of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, leaving pregnant women and newborns without essential care.
Geneva, 12 December 2025 – Storm Byron, a severe storm system that triggered flooding in Greece and Cyprus before reaching Gaza earlier this week, has now made landfall, bringing heavy rainfall that has already flooded multiple displacement sites and placed nearly 795,000* displaced Palestinians at heightened risk.
Flooding in Gaza has damaged shelters and left families exposed to rising risks. Photo: IOM 2025
Rainfall is expected to continue in the hours ahead, further straining conditions for families already living in unsafe shelters.
(UN News)* —The vast majority of World Health Organization (WHO) member States say 40 to 90 per cent of their populations now use traditional medicine.
That’s according to Shyama Kuruvilla, director of WHO’s Global Traditional Medicine Centre, established in 2022 to tap into the potential of these systems for healthcare and well-being.
“With half the world’s population lacking access to essential health services, traditional medicine is often the closest or only care available for many people,” Ms. Kuruvilla told a virtual media briefing on , ahead of this month’s WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine.
Responding to EU home affairs ministers’ position on the EU Return Regulation agreed in Brussels on , Olivia Sundberg Diez, EU Advocate on Migration and Asylum at Amnesty International, said:
“EU ministers’ position on the Return Regulation reveals the EU’s dogged and misguided insistence on ramping up deportations, raids, surveillance, and detention at any cost…
… These punitive measures amount to an unprecedented stripping of rights based on migration status and will leave more people in precarious situations and legal limbo.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 