Palestine: Acute malnutrition reaches an all-time high in two MSF facilities
The starvation of people in Gaza is intentional.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are witnessing a sharp and unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition among Palestinians in Gaza. At MSF’s clinics in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza and Gaza City in the north, we are seeing the highest number of malnutrition cases ever recorded by our teams.
More than 700 pregnant and breastfeeding women and nearly 500 children with severe and moderate malnutrition are currently enrolled in outpatient therapeutic feeding centres in both clinics. Numbers in the Gaza City clinic almost quadrupled in less than two months, from 293 cases in May up to 983 cases at the beginning of July. Of this cohort, 326 are children between six and 23 months old.
“This is my third time in Gaza and I’ve never seen anything like this. Mothers are asking me for food for their children, pregnant women who are six months along often weigh no more than 40 kilograms (88 pounds). The situation is beyond critical.”
Joanne Perry, MSF doctor
“This is the first time we have witnessed such a severe scale of malnutrition cases in Gaza,” says Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, doctor and MSF deputy medical coordinator in Gaza. “The starvation of people in Gaza is intentional. It could end tomorrow if the Israeli authorities allow food in at scale.”
Malnutrition amid Gaza’s broader collapse
The existence of malnutrition in Gaza is the result of deliberate, calculated choices by the Israeli authorities: to restrict the entry of food to the bare minimum for survival, control and militarize its distribution and destroy the majority of local food production capacity.
As people risk their lives for small amounts of inadequate food through distribution sites like those run by the Israeli-US backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, they do so amid a wider collapse of essential services and living conditions. This includes sewage contamination as infrastructure remains destroyed, restrictions on fuel limiting the production of clean water, appalling living conditions in overcrowded camps and 20 months of compromised immunity amid a devastated health system.
“Due to widespread malnutrition among pregnant women and poor water and sanitation levels, many babies are being born prematurely,” says Joanne Perry, MSF doctor. “Our neonatal intensive care unit is severely overcrowded, with four to five babies sharing a single incubator.”
“This is my third time in Gaza, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Perry. “Mothers are asking me for food for their children, pregnant women who are six months along often weigh no more than 40 kilograms (88 pounds). The situation is beyond critical.”
“I’m a mother and I can’t blame them because I would do the same. But I feel helpless as a healthcare provider. People are hungry and ask us for therapeutic food, but we don’t have enough and can only prescribe them to people diagnosed with malnutrition.”
Nour Nijim, MSF nursing team supervisor
Before October 2023, Gaza was heavily reliant on the entry of goods and supplies from outside, with an average of 500 trucks entering Gaza every day. Since March 2, there has barely been that number in total. With border crossings for assistance frequently closed or operating under heavy limitations and with local food production nearly impossible due to ongoing hostilities and destruction, markets are either empty or unaffordable for most.
Inevitably, prices of food have skyrocketed across Gaza, placing even basic staples out of reach for most people. For example, one kilogram of sugar costs on average $100, while a kilogram of potatoes or flour costs nearly $41, according to the World Food Programme. Due to this, many families are surviving on just one portion of food a day – often only rice, lentils, or pasta – with no access to bread, fresh vegetables or enough protein.
Lack of food prevents healing
Parents are also deliberately skipping meals to feed their children. Even malnourished women, who do receive therapeutic food, end up giving their own treatment supplements to their children.
“I’m a mother and I can’t blame them because I would do the same,” says Nour Nijim, MSF nursing team supervisor. “But I feel helpless as a healthcare provider. People are hungry and ask us for therapeutic food, but we don’t have enough and can only prescribe them to people diagnosed with malnutrition.”
Malnourished people are only the visible tip of a much larger crisis. At MSF clinics, injured patients beg for food instead of medicine, their wounds failing to close due to protein deficiency. Our doctors observe rapid weight loss in recovering patients, prolonged infections and visible fatigue among people who don’t have enough food to heal.
MSF urgently calls for unrestricted humanitarian access, a sustained flow of food and medical assistance into Gaza and the protection of civilians.
