A/HRC/4/57 page 4 infants.2 According to 2006 Ministry of Health statistics, there were currently an estimated 117,000 pregnant women in the OPT, including around 18,000 who suffered from difficult pregnancy and birth due to a lack of appropriate and timely antenatal, delivery and post-natal care. In fact, inadequate medical care during pregnancy was the third cause of mortality among Palestinian women of reproductive age. 13. UNFPA thus urged that civilians with urgent needs should have access to health facilities, and that humanitarian organizations be allowed to work freely to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people, especially women and children. In this regard, UNFPA had been helping Palestinian women to avoid distress, including from delays at checkpoints. Key interventions included training of health personnel in emergency obstetric care; equipping trained health-care personnel with delivery kits to enable them to provide more effective service delivery in their respective communities; facilitation of the formation of community support teams to assist health providers and to raise community awareness on the availability of delivery services; and procurement of medications and supplies to ensure the continuity of maternal services. 14. The latest Israeli military incursions into the Gaza Strip, which started on 28 June 2006, had compounded the suffering of the Palestinian population in general and women and young people in particular. General damage to infrastructure, power grids and communication services jeopardized provision of adequate health services. UNFPA was concerned about the negative impact of such damage on maternal outcome, including death. In Gaza, the inability to refer properly emergency cases outside of the Strip had been observed as a factor related to maternal death in a recent Ministry of Health descriptive study supported by UNFPA (Maternal Death Study, Ministry of Health, December 2006). 15. Through its network with the Ministry of Health and civil society organizations in Palestine, UNFPA continued to work with its partners on the provision of essential emergency services and supplies, including the restoration of health facilities, as well as psychosocial and clinical services. UNFPA also raised the issue that any birth at a checkpoint or inability to refer a pregnant woman as a result of a military barrier that resulted in birth, death or disability was a breach of human and reproductive rights. ----- 2 There is one unit of difference vis-à-vis the statistics submitted by the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine which mention 69 pregnant women delayed at checkpoints and 35 newborn babies.