‘No one is spared’: Children are starving to death in Gaza and even the medics treating them faint from hunger
Babies that were just whispers of skin and bone died as their mothers were too starved to produce milk to feed them.
Now even the medics trying to treat the malnourished at Shifa Hospital in north Gaza are so hungry and sick themselves that some have fainted and been treated with intravenous fluids.
Palestinian health officials say at least 111 people have died of hunger during the conflict, including 80 children, most of them in recent weeks and 10 in the last 24 hours alone.
Even people trying to get food from aid sites are putting their lives at risk. The UN human rights office said on Tuesday that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food in the strip, mostly near aid sites run by an American contractor.
As more than 100 human rights groups and charities demand more aid for Gaza in a letter published on Wednesday, a doctor has revealed the scale of the horror as the besieged enclave’s food crisis continues to deepen.
Shifa Hospital’s director, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, told The Independent that at least three children have died from malnutrition on his own wards alone.
“The children arrived in a critical condition. They were just skin and bones. All vital organs were failing. They were on their last gasp,” he said in desperation.
“There is no baby formula. There is no food. Even the milk in the mothers’ breasts has dried up.”
He said his own staff are also hungry, working day and night shifts with no food, and often unable to help.
“Some medical staff were admitted to the hospital to receive intravenous fluids,” he added.
The head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency said on Tuesday that its staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.
“No one is spared: caretakers in Gaza are also in need of care. Doctors, nurses, journalists and humanitarians are hungry,” UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said.
Khaled Mohammed Al-Nabrisi is a doctor in Deir al-Balah, an area that is now under evacuation orders.
“Deir al-Balah has been suffering before, and now it is suffering even more due to the evacuation,” he said. “The hospital’s 200 beds now exceed 500. The intensive care units have been expanded from 10 beds to 17, with an occupancy rate of 200 percent.
