The UN’s health agency has said that stocks of medical equipment in Gaza are running low and that nearly half of basic medicines, such as painkillers, are out of stock.

“We are at stock zero of close to 64 percent of medical equipment and stock zero of 42 percent of essential medicines and vaccines,” Hanan Balkhy, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, told reporters in Geneva.

In remarks last week, Balkhy warned that health conditions in Gaza had reached “crisis levels” and that medical facilities were “barely functional”.