DAMASCUS, Syria / BEIRUT, Lebanon / JERUSALEM, Palestine – Recent escalations in the conflict in the Middle East are driving mass displacements and interrupting critical health services for women and girls. Israeli authorities are forcing new hospital evacuations in northern Gaza, including two that provide emergency obstetric care for pregnant women, amid bombardments and ground operations. The evacuation orders are driving Gazans to the south, a region facing overcrowding and a deficit in basic services, United Nations officials described on Monday. 

Meanwhile, health services in Lebanon have been severely disrupted. A least 98 primary health centres have been forced to close in the last year, and five hospitals are now not functioning either due to physical or infrastructural damage. Thousands continue to cross the border from Lebanon into Syria, many of them displaced for the second or third time.

The mass displacements are taking a particular toll on women and girls, with no reprieve in sight as hostilities continue to intensify.  

An estimated 60,000 women have given birth in Gaza since the start of the conflict one year ago. In that time, UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, has helped some 45,000 of those women deliver safely – yet many others have been unable to reach safe childbirth services. And now many health centres, already barely functional, are shuttering because staff are trapped at home by fighting, unable to report to work, or because sexual and reproductive health personnel are being redeployed to the south to address the influx of displaced people.