The meeting comes as leaders from international humanitarian organisations said aid to Gaza was “urgently needed”.
Qatar’s Minister of Public Health Hanan Mohamed Al Kuwari has met with Doctor Without Borders’ (MSF) representative in the Middle East and North Africa, Antoine Blair.
Al Kuwari met her MSF counterpart on Sunday in Doha to discuss methods to “reinforce and upgrade” bilateral ties, Qatar News Agency reported.
A key topic on the agenda was also the worsening humanitarian crises in Palestine and Sudan, including barriers to MSF being able to safely provide medical assistance and services to those in dire need.
Since October 7, Israel has wreaked carnage on Gaza – killing more than 24,000 Palestinians. According to figures from Palestine’s Health Ministry, at least 60,000 more people are injured.
In a joint press statement from Sunday by the World Food Programme, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation chiefs, aid into Gaza is now “urgently needed”.
Despite the availability of aid and aid workers, the press statement added that its delivery hinged on “the opening of new entry routes; more trucks being allowed through border checks each day”.
As well as, “fewer restrictions on the movement of humanitarian workers; and guarantees of safety for people accessing and distributing aid,” the statement added.
According to Diaa Rashwan, the chairman of Egypt’s State Information Service, Israel is solely to blame for the aid impasse.
“Throughout these 100 days, [there] has been the stubbornness and intentionality of the occupying Israeli authorities,” Rashwan is quoted as saying in a communique uploaded to Facebook on Sunday.
He also stressed that Egyptian authorities never closed the Rafah border crossing, even “for a single moment” since October 7.
Instead, according to the Egyptian official, under the guise of necessary border inspections, Israeli authorities have continuously deliberately disrupted and delayed the entry of much-needed aid into Palestine’s besieged enclave.
Qatari humanitarian organisations have strived to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as civilians caught in the conflict in Sudan.
In the wake of Israel’s renewed expansionist violence against Palestinians, Qatar has dispatched at least 61 national Armed Forces aircraft to Egypt’s Al Arish city to be transferred to Gaza.
Combined, these operations have carried a total of 1,897 tonnes of aid, Qatar Tribune reported.
In December, the Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) reported that, in cooperation with Sudan’s Ministry of Social Affairs, Humanitarian Aid Commission and the Sudanese Red Crescent Society, food and non-food aid were dispatched to Sudan.
This aid package included 3,000 food parcels and over 1,000 nonfood kits.
“In the wake of the conflict in Sudan, QRCS was one of the first organizations to promptly provide humanitarian aid for affected communities through the Qatari airlift,” the QRCS news release said.
As of December, QRCS aid “has reached out to 12 states, providing emergency medical, sanitation, and food aid for IDPs there”.
