GAUZE:
Two Palestinian toddlers with sunken eyes and emaciated faces, one in a yellow cardigan and the other in a striped blouse, lay side by side on a bed in a Gaza clinic, their thin, bony legs protruding from the diapers that covered them. it seemed too big.
That was the scene on Monday at the Al-Awda Health Center in Rafah, southern Gaza, where nurse Diaa Al-Shaer said children suffering from malnutrition and a range of illnesses were reaching unprecedented numbers.
“We will be dealing with a large number of patients suffering from this, which is malnutrition,” he said.
The toddler in the yellow jacket, Ahmed Qannan, weighed 6 kilograms (13.2 pounds), half his pre-war body weight, according to his aunt, Israa Kalakh, who was by his side.
“His condition is getting worse every day. May God protect us from what is coming,” he told Reuters.
Nearly five months after Israel’s air and ground invasion of Gaza and the resulting mass displacements, acute food shortages have led to what the United Nations describes as a food crisis, part of a wider humanitarian disaster.
Gaza’s health ministry announced Sunday that 15 children died of malnutrition or dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, the part of the enclave where food shortages are most extreme.
“The unofficial numbers are unfortunately expected to be higher,” said World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier.
The worsening hunger crisis has intensified criticism of Israel on the world stage, including from US Vice President Kamala Harris, whose country is Israel’s staunchest ally. He said on Sunday that people in Gaza were starving, calling on Israel to do more to significantly increase the flow of aid.
Reuters obtained a video shot on Saturday in Kamal Adwan, which shows a woman, Anwar Abdulnabi, crying over the body of her daughter Mila, a toddler, who had just died in her bed.
“My daughter, my beautiful daughter, my gentle daughter is dead,” cried Abdulnabi. She later said through her tears that Mila suffered from calcium and potassium deficiency.
Dr Ahmad Salem, who works in the hospital’s intensive care unit, said one of the factors in the high number of child deaths there was that new mothers were themselves malnourished.
“Mothers can’t breastfeed their children. We don’t have formula milk. This has led to deaths of children here in the intensive care unit. Also in the nursery, there are many deaths,” he said.
“Help and Despair”
Food aid deliveries across Gaza fall far short of what is needed, and the problem is worse in the north because the only crossings where Israel allows trucks through are in the south. Some aid trucks were seized by desperate crowds before reaching the north.
“The sense of helplessness and hopelessness among parents and doctors at the realization that lifesaving aid, a few kilometers away, is being kept away must be unbearable,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.
In its latest situation report, dated March 1, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said an average of about 97 trucks a day entered Gaza in February, down from about 150 in January and far fewer than 500 trucks per day. goal of the day.
UN agencies and humanitarian organizations have blamed the shortfall on Israeli actions, including the closure of land crossings in northern Gaza, ongoing military operations and a complex system of Israeli checks on items destined for Gaza.
Israel claims it is not restricting humanitarian or medical aid and has blamed the lack of deliveries on the capacity of aid agencies. However, the reality is far from what the settler-colonial state claims.
Israel blames the Palestinian resistance group Hamas for attacking the settlement state on October 7 and killing 1,200 people – many of whom were killed by Israeli fire it later revealed. In response, Israel’s brutal siege and subsequent invasion of the besieged Palestinian enclave killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Back at the Al-Awda health center in Rafah, a 12-year-old boy named Yazan Al-Kafarna died on Monday. Filmed for Reuters on Saturday, he was pale and emaciated, with skeletal limbs.
Dr. Jabir Al-Shaar, head of the pediatric department at Abu Yousef Al-Najar Hospital in Rafah, where the boy was treated until he was transferred to Al-Awda, said Yazan had cerebral palsy and was dependent on a special diet such as mixed fruit and milk, items no longer available in Gaza.
The doctor attributed the boy’s death to malnutrition. The case was already becoming a celebrity on Monday, reported at a meeting of the UN General Assembly by Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour.
His mother, Um Yazan Al-Kafarna, spent the last days of his life by his side.
“He was eating, drinking, moving, playing, laughing. I was playing with him,” she said.
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