WHO concerned about outbreak of diseases as conflict restricts aid supplies

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday that it feared outbreaks of infectious diseases due to dirty water and people fleeing fighting nearing Tripoli, where it has about two weeks of emergency supplies for hospitals and health facilities.

After a week of fighting, 75 people have been killed and 323 wounded, including seven civilians killed and 10 wounded, Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain, WHO representative in Libya, told a Geneva news briefing by telephone from Tripoli.

The WHO has delivered trauma kits and medicines to hospitals, he said, adding: "These supplies will last for two weeks, the acute phase." So far 6,000 have fled the fighting but WHO has contingency plans in case "thousands if not hundreds of thousands" are displaced in the acute phase of fighting.