Flies that spread diseases torment the West Bank, north of Israel

A disease-spreading sandfly has been rampant in the central and northern West Bank and Lower Galilee in recent months, prompting authorities to call for increased public spending to deal with this threat.

Sandflies found in Israel and surrounding areas often carry a parasite called Leishmania, which they contract from the rocky hyrax, a small desert mammal native to the Middle East. East and Africa. People bitten by an infected sandfly develop leishmaniasis, a disease characterized by skin ulcers and open wounds at the site of the bite that can take up to 18 months to heal completely.

Children are particularly vulnerable to leishmaniasis because sandflies tend to fly close to the ground.

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"It keeps spreading, so I think we're in a national emergency," said Professor Eli Schwartz, director of Tel Hashomer's Center for Geographic Medicine. Hadashot. "When you look at the distribution of the epidemic on a map, it covers about 50% of Israel."

Schwartz said that some communities in northern and central Israel had an infection rate of 30% and that some military bases in the city of Israel had an infection rate of 30%. army were at 50%.

In 2016, dozens of cases of leishmaniasis were reported. north of the West Bank, mainly in the Tzofim settlement. Locals of the time said that the construction of the security fence over the last decade has led to a decrease in hyrax habitats, a charge that the Defense Ministry has firmly denied

. even for the control of the population, is illegal. Efforts by the Israeli Authority for Nature and Parks to keep rocks away from residential areas in recent years have only pushed animals to other settlements in the area.

In Nili, in the central West Bank, an electric fence was recently erected. Local residents say the measure did not help, and packets of hyrax are seen wandering in the colony.

The mayor of the nearby town of Modiin told Hadashot that the money allocated to the fight against leishmaniasis was

Haim Bibas said he had requested an urgent meeting with Deputy Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman and local leaders to discuss the issue

"The budgets allocated for this over the last four years are simply not enough, "he said. "We are witnessing an epidemic of leishmaniasis."

In response to the report, several government agencies pledged to divert additional funds to help combat the spread of the disease, but blamed the lack of a coordinated response.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection declared that it was taking "the very large number" of cases in Israel, but claimed that it had not received any 39, money in its 2019 budget for the treatment and prevention of leishmaniasis

. had transferred 30 million NIS to fight against leishmaniasis, but the agency has embezzled funds.

"To this day, despite the pbading of time, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has not managed to spend the money to solve the problem". , adding that the department had "chosen to use it for other issues."

The Ministry of Health also denied that leishmaniasis was reaching epidemic levels, and the data showed a decrease in the number of cases in recent years. The ministry indicated that it was conducting epidemiological studies to monitor the spread of leishmaniasis and seek better treatment options