Water and sanitation services are at the point of collapse in Gaza with large-scale disease outbreaks looming, the UN children’s agency says, Al Jazeera reports.

According to humanitarian standards, the minimum amount of water needed in an emergency is 15 litres, which includes water for drinking, washing and cooking. For survival alone, the estimated minimum is three litres per day.

Recently displaced children in the southern Gaza Strip are accessing only 1.5 to 2 litres of water each day, well below the recommended requirements just for survival, according to Unicef estimates.

“Access to sufficient amounts of clean water is a matter of life and death, and children in Gaza have barely a drop to drink,” said Executive Director Catherine Russell.

“Children and their families are having to use water from unsafe sources that are highly salinated or polluted. Without safe water, many more children will die from deprivation and disease in the coming days,” she added.