Five starving children at a Gaza City hospital were wasting away, and nothing the doctors tried was working. The basic treatments for malnourishment that could save them had run out under Israel’s blockade. The alternatives were ineffective. One after another, the babies and toddlers died over four days.
In greater numbers than ever, children hollowed up by hunger are overwhelming the Patient’s Friends Hospital, the main emergency center for malnourished kids in northern Gaza.
The deaths last weekend also marked a change: the first seen by the center in children who had no preexisting conditions. Symptoms were getting worse, with children too weak to cry or move, said Dr Rana Soboh, a nutritionist.
In past months, most improved, despite supply shortages, but now patients stayed longer and didn’t get better, she said.
“There are no words in the face of the disaster we are in. Kids are dying before the world,” said Soboh, who works with the US-based aid organisation Medglobal, which supports the hospital. “There is no uglier and more horrible phase than this.”
This month, the hunger that has been building among Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians passed a tipping point into accelerating death, aid workers and health staff say. Not only children – usually the most vulnerable – are falling victim under Israel’s blockade since March, but also adults.
In the past three weeks, at least 48 people died of causes related to malnutrition, including 28 adults and 20 children, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday.
That’s up from 10 children who died in the five previous months of 2025, according to the ministry.
The UN reports similar numbers. The WHO said Wednesday it had documented 21 children under five who died of causes related to malnutrition in 2025. The UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said at least 13 children’s deaths were reported in July, with the number growing daily.
“Humans are well developed to live with caloric deficits, but only so far,” said Dr John Kahler, Medglobal’s co-founder and a pediatrician who volunteered twice in Gaza during the war.
“It appears that we have crossed the line where a segment of the population has reached their limits. This is the beginning of a population death spiral.”
The UN World Food Programme says nearly 100,000 women and children urgently need treatment for malnutrition. Medical workers say they have run out of many key treatments and medicines.
Israel, which has let in only a trickle of supplies over the past two months, has blamed Hamas for disrupting food distribution. The UN counters that Israel, which has restricted aid since the war began, simply has to allow it to enter freely.
The Patient’s Friends Hospital overflows with parents bringing in scrawny children, 200 to 300 cases a day, according to Soboh.
