'Unimaginable' hunger crisis grips Gaza: In just two weeks, malnutrition tripled among children under 5 years

A severe and fast-worsening hunger crisis is sweeping Gaza, where rates of malnutrition among children under five have tripled in just two weeks, revealed Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The medical charity in a statement on Friday (Jul 25) warned that a quarter of all young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women it screened last week were malnourished. At its Gaza City clinic alone, MSF said the number of patients seeking treatment for malnutrition has quadrupled since May.

The organisation directly blamed Israel for what it described as a “deliberate policy of starvation” for the hunger crisis. In a statement, the group said that “Israeli authorities’ deliberate use of starvation as a weapon in Gaza has reached unprecedented levels, with patients and healthcare workers themselves now fighting to survive.”

People dying of hunger

At least 122 people have died of hunger in Gaza, with nine deaths reported in the past 24 hours alone, according to local health officials. However, many believe the true death toll is higher — and growing. The World Food Programme on Friday, echoed the alarm, saying nearly one in three people in Gaza are now going without food for days at a time. The hunger crisis had reached "new and astonishing levels of desperation" it said, adding, "Nearly one person in three is not eating for days. Malnutrition is surging, with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment".

Talking to AFP, Naji al-Qurashali, an obstetrician-gynaecologist in Gaza, said that the reported statistics underestimate the harrowing reality. He estimated that at least 50 per cent of the hundreds of pregnant women he saw every day were suffering from malnutrition.

"The malnutrition situation is unimaginable. Throughout my entire medical career, I never expected, not even in my wildest dreams, that things would reach this level," he said. According to the Gaza doctor the number of miscarriages has increased as starving women struggled to find food to feed themselves.