Gender-specific aid sent to women in Gaza

Saraya Hussain, from Birmingham, said handwritten messages of "love, peace and hope" were included

An all-female group of charity volunteers from Birmingham have sent gender-specific products to women in Gaza to help those in the region.

The eight women spent last week in a warehouse in Egypt packing and loading about 3,000 hygiene kits on to a lorry, which is due to be driven across the Rafah border into Gaza.

Each kit includes five packets of sanitary towels, two tubes of toothpaste, a toothbrush, body lotion, hand sanitiser, packets of wet wipes and shampoo.

The eight women have been working with the charity ISRA-UK.

Saraya Hussain, from Birmingham, who led the project, said handwritten messages of "love, peace and hope" were included.

Seeing the lorry ready to go was emotional for many of the volunteers, she said.

"One of the team described it as bittersweet, in that she felt proud that she was able to do something but it equally felt like it was so little.

"The products will be beneficial to everyone, including women, to help them keep clean and give them a little bit of dignity as best as we can."

Ms Hussain said she had seen reports emerging from Gaza where women were "really suffering with their periods" and using "old rags" and "chopping up old tents" to cope.

"It's not nice for anybody to have to do something like that, so here we are," she said.

'Persevere' with trip

The all-female team at ISRA-UK embarked on a similar deployment to Turkey last year following the earthquakes in the region.

"What we learnt from that was that largely in conflict and disaster areas, women's needs, their gender-specific needs, are really often overlooked," Ms Hussain said.

She has previously told how the group had decided to "persevere" with their trip despite the news of an Israeli air strike killing seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on 1 April.

Ms Hussain said: "To lose their lives... and leave behind multiple families that are mourning and grieving for them in some of the worst circumstances ever is really quite worrying."

The products in the hygiene kits for women in Gaza were purchased in Egypt with money raised from public donations and fundraisers organised by volunteers in the UK.