Malnutrition and hunger cause children in Gaza to start dying after months of famine warnings

Children are beginning to die in Gaza as a result of Israel’s shelling, offensives, and blockade, despite months of warnings about the possibility of hunger. The northern Gaza region, which has been cut off from food supplies for an extended period of time and is isolated by Israeli soldiers, is where hunger is most severe.

The Health Ministry reports that at least 20 patients at the Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals in the north had passed away from starvation and dehydration. A 72-year-old man and children as young as 15 are among the deceased, making up the majority of the deceased. In addition, more and more vulnerable children are dying in the south, where assistance is more often available.

16 preterm newborns at the Emirati Hospital in Rafah have passed away during the last five weeks from problems connected to malnutrition, a top doctor told The Associated Press.

UNICEF’s Middle East head, Adele Khodr, said in a statement earlier this week, “The child deaths we feared are here.”

Usually, malnutrition kills slowly, initially taking its toll on young people and the elderly. There may be other things at work. Moms who are underfed find it difficult to nurse their kids. Immune systems are weakened by malnutrition, and other infections may sometimes cause mortality.

According to Anuradha Narayan, a UNICEF child nutrition specialist, many people in Gaza are unable to retain any of the calories they consume because of the widespread diarrheal illnesses brought on by a lack of clean water and sanitation.

After Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, Israel launched its assault on Gaza, mainly cutting off the entrance of food, water, medicine, and other supplies; only a small stream of relief vehicles was allowed to pass via two southern crossings.

Israel has accused UN agencies of failing to transfer goods that are piled up at Gaza borders, which has resulted in the escalating famine in Gaza.

The major UN agency in Gaza, UNRWA, claims that Israel slows access by imposing onerous inspections and restrictions on some products.

Additionally, distribution inside Gaza has been severely disrupted; UN officials report that Israeli troops often turn back convoys; the military frequently denies safe passage during hostilities; and starving Palestinians steal supplies off trucks as it is being delivered to designated locations.

Israel said this week that it would allow marine shipments and open ports for supplies into northern Gaza in response to mounting international and US pressure.

In the midst of the continuous fighting between Israel and the Islamist organization Hamas, displaced Palestinian children congregate to obtain food at a government school in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 19, 2024.
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In the midst of the continuous fighting between Israel and the Islamist organization Hamas, displaced Palestinian children congregate to obtain food at a government school in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 19, 2024.
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Hopelessness in the North

The situation in the north, which has been mostly ruled by Israel for months, has become dire. Israeli troops have destroyed whole neighborhoods of Gaza City and the surrounding environs to rubble. However, there are still hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Several locals told the AP that it’s almost hard to get meat, milk, veggies, or fruit.

The few things found in stores are wildly inflated and haphazardly priced; the majority are nuts, snacks, and seasonings. Bakeries have given up their barrels of chocolate, which people are now selling in little smears.

Most people consume “khubaiza,” a plant that grows in vacant lands. Living in northern Gaza with her two sons and their kids, 70-year-old Fatima Shaheen said her family’s primary meal is boiling khubaiza, and they also grind up food intended for rabbits to use as flour.

Shaheen remarked, “We are dying for a piece of bread.”

Mira, his 18-month-old daughter, eats largely boiling weeds, according to Qamar Ahmed. Ahmed is an economic journalist and researcher with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. “There is no food that suits her age,” Ahmed stated. Oleyan, Ahmed’s small kid, receives his own meal from his 70-year-old father. Ahmed said of his father, “We try to make him eat, and he refuses.”

Living in the Jabaliya refugee camp, Mahmoud Shalaby said that he saw a dad in the market give his two boys a bag of potato chips and instruct them to finish it for lunch and breakfast.

Shalaby, the senior program manager for the humanitarian organization Medical Aid for Palestinians in northern Gaza, stated, “Everyone knows I have lost weight.”

The AP was informed by Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, the interim director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, that 75 percent of the youngsters his team sees each day are malnourished.

Truck deliveries, which are becoming uncommon and sometimes perilous, give significantly more help than recent US and other international airdrops. According to UNRWA, since January 23, Israeli authorities have not permitted it to transport supplies to the north.

The World Food Organization said that the military pushed its first convoy north in two weeks to turn back on Tuesday. The organization had suspended delivery due to safety concerns.

Thousands of starving Palestinians crowded the vehicles when the Israeli military organized a food delivery to Gaza City last week. The IDF claims that soldiers monitoring the convoy opened fire on a perceived danger. In addition to being run over in the mayhem, some 120 individuals were murdered in the shooting.

In the midst of the continuous fighting between Israel and the Islamist organization Hamas, displaced Palestinian children congregate to obtain food at a government school in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 19, 2024.
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Declining South

After receiving ineffective care for over a week in Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza, 10-year-old Yazan al-Kafarna passed away on Monday. The youngster seemed very thin in photos, with limbs like sticks and eyes that were deeply sunken in a face that had shriveled up to his skull.

Al-Kafarna suffered from cerebral palsy from birth, a neurological disorder that impairs motor abilities and may make eating and swallowing challenging. Since leaving their home in the north, his parents said they have had difficulty finding food that he can consume, including soft fruits and eggs.

The chief of the emergency department for children at Abu Youssef Najjar Hospital, Dr. Jabr al-Shair, said that the man died from severe muscular atrophy mostly brought on by malnourishment.

Approximately eighty emaciated youngsters crammed the hospital’s wards on a recent day. 19-year-old Aya al-Fayoume, who was uprooted to Rafah, had taken her 3-month-old baby Nisreen with her. Nisreen had lost a significant amount of weight throughout the winter and has been unwell with frequent vomiting and diarrhea. Al-Fayoume said that since she mostly eats canned foods, she doesn’t make enough breast milk for Nisreen.

“Everything I need is expensive or unavailable,” she said.

With so many people displaced, Rafah’s population has increased to over a million, and fresh food supplies have decreased. The major supplies are canned foods, which are often included in relief shipments.

Malnutrition among mothers is the primary cause of the recent preterm baby fatalities, according to Dr. Ahmed al-Shair, deputy director of the nursery section at Emirati Hospital. Doctors report anecdotal evidence of an increase in preterm, underweight newborns during the conflict, despite the UN lacking numbers. The causes of these births include malnourishment and high stress.

According to Al-Shair, preterm newborns get treatment for a few days in order to gain weight. But after that, kids are sent home, which is sometimes a cold tent, with moms who are too undernourished to nurse their children and hard to get milk. Instead, some parents feed their babies plain water, which is often dirty and may result in diarrhea.

The newborns “are brought back to us in a terrible state” after a few days. Al-Shair said, “Some were brought in already dead. According to him, the hospital lost 14 newborns in February and two more this month in March.

There are now 44 infants under 10 days old in the hospital’s wards, some of whom are on life support and weigh as little as 2 kilos (4 pounds). There are at least three preterm newborns in each incubator, which increases the possibility of infection. Some of them, Al-Shair remarked, he worries, will suffer the same fate back home.