According to a joint statement released on Thursday, the humanitarian aid system in Gaza “is facing total collapse” as a result of the last 18 months of Israel’s military operation and the recent beginning of a full blockade.
Due to “widespread and indiscriminate bombing making it extremely dangerous to move around,” it added, an estimated 95 percent of the 43 international and Palestinian aid organizations have already suspended or cut their services in Gaza.
Bushra Khalil, policy director of the aid organization Oxfam, said that “kids are struggling to find their next meal.” “Everyone is merely consuming canned food,” according to the statement. “Gaza is experiencing famine and malnourishment without a doubt.”
Aid workers have been forced to watch people suffer and die, according to Amande Bazerolle, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, as they carry “the impossible burden of providing relief with exhausted supplies.”
She said, “This is not a humanitarian failure; it is a political choice and a deliberate assault on a people’s capacity to survive, carried out with impunity.”
Hani Mahmoud of Al Jazeera reported on Friday that the enclave was running out of baby formula, leaving malnourished children and young people in Gaza City.
“We’ve seen a lot of severe malnutrition cases,” he said. Even the most vulnerable, such as children and newborn babies, cannot families provide for their most basic needs. The market and pharmacy lacks baby formula, according to Mahmoud. “Gaza is quickly running out of everything.”
Palestinians told Al Jazeera that they are losing their children to malnutrition outside of Deir el-Balah Hospital.
Fadi Ahmed, who lost his son, claimed that hospital staff “found massive lungs that caused a severe lack of oxygen in his blood.”
After spending a week in the hospital, the boy’s weakness and severe malnutrition caused his inability to resist and eventually his death.
Grandma’s granddaughter Intisar Hamdan claimed he and his parents had been unable to get any milk for three days and that he had lost their grandson.
According to Tareq Abu Azzoum of Al Jazeera, “children are suffering from serious medical complications and diseases that cannot be easily treated and require medical supplies that are scarce.”
At least 60 000 children in the Palestinian territory are categorized as malnourished, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Gaza is known as the “deadliest place on earth for humanitarian workers,” according to the aid organizations, making it even more challenging to provide services to children.
Despite international humanitarian law’s requirement that humanitarian and health workers be protected, more than 400 aid workers and 1,300 health workers have died in Gaza since October 2023.
The recent murder of 15 Palestinian rescue workers and paramedics, whose bodies were discovered in a mass grave, sparked outcry worldwide, but many crimes and attacks remain unreported, according to the statement.
Source: Aljazeera
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