This is the News in Brief from the United Nations. 

Gaza aid ready for delivery as humanitarians await green light 

Humanitarians continued to stand ready on Thursday to deliver lifesaving aid to Gaza following the deal reportedly brokered by the United States for 20 aid trucks to enter the enclave from Egypt.

Some 3,000 tonnes of supplies have been awaiting entry on the Egyptian side of the crossing since Saturday. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres is in Cairo on Thursday to pursue his diplomatic efforts, following his call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the wake of a strike on Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, which killed 471 people according to Gaza’s de facto authorities.

Gaza’s population has been facing an increasingly disastrous situation, with a full electricity blackout since 11 October, rising food insecurity and a health system on the brink of collapse.

According to UN humanitarian coordination office OCHA, the average water consumption for all needs, including drinking, cooking and hygiene is estimated at only three litres per day per person in Gaza. 

The UN office also warned that people consume water from unsafe sources “risking death and placing the population at risk of infectious disease outbreaks”. 

OCHA reported that about one million people, or close to half of Gaza’s entire population, have been displaced since the start of the conflict. 

Over 500,000 are staying in emergency shelters designated as such by the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.

AI use for health must be regulated to fight misinformation and bias: WHO

The use of artificial intelligence, or AI, in health care has the potential to transform the sector, improving medical diagnosis and treatment – but there could be huge risks involved when AI gets access to sensitive personal information.

That’s the message from the World Health Organization (WHO), which released new guidance on Thursday for regulating AI for health.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that to fulfil AI’s promise “whether in treating cancer or detecting tuberculosis” countries had to address challenges including unethical data collection, cybersecurity threats and “amplifying biases or misinformation”. 

The UN health agency said that the new guidance aims to help set up legal and regulatory frameworks for safeguarding information privacy, security and integrity. 

WHO also insisted on the need for better collaboration in this area between regulatory bodies, patients, healthcare professionals, industry representatives and government partners.

Sand and dust storm hazards boosted by global warming: WMO

Sand and dust storms are increasingly threatening people’s health, safety and livelihoods – and climate change is making matters worse.

The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a new report on Thursday that every year, around 2,000 million tonnes of dust enter the atmosphere, “darkening skies and harming air quality in regions that can be thousands of kilometres away”.

WMO chief Petteri Taalas said this was partly due to poor water and land management. The phenomenon was also exacerbated by higher temperatures and drought brought on by a warming climate, leading to higher evaporation and drier soils.

WMO said that exposure to dust particles has been associated with heart attacks, cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. Sand and dust storms also pose risks to aviation and ground transportation as well as agriculture. 

According to WMO in 2022, hotspots with significantly higher dust concentrations were identified in Central and South America, most of Central Africa, Spain, the Red Sea, the Arabian Peninsula, as well as in Iran, south Asia and northwest China.

Prof. Taalas stressed WMO’s commitment to help countries improve dust storm forecasting skills and early warning services. He also underscored that more needed to be done in the face of continuing environmental degradation and fast-advancing climate change.

Climate change ‘a matter of life and death’ for people with albinism: top rights expert

And staying with climate change: its impacts on skin cancer in people with albinism are both deadly and largely overlooked, a UN-appointed independent rights expert said on Thursday.

Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond, the UN independent expert on albinism, said that in Africa alone, persons with albinism are up to 1000 times more likely to develop skin cancer, with many dying by the age of 40.

She said she has campaigned tirelessly for sunscreen to be made freely available to persons with albinism, as a “life-saving medical product that can prolong and improve the quality of life for many who don't have the means to afford it”.

People with albinism also have visual impairment, the expert said, and as such are disproportionately affected by climate-related disasters.

Ms. Miti-Drummond called for the inclusion of people with albinism in all fora related to climate change and disaster management, insisting that for many of them, climate change is “a matter of life and death”.

Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer, UN News.