In recent weeks we spoke by video with doctors around the Gaza Strip. Through virtual tours of medical facilities, we sought to document the situation in which thousands of children suffer from severe acute malnutrition. What we saw was of catastrophic proportions
Bayan Saqer is lying on a bed. Her mother is supporting her, holding her head. She's 10, very thin, frail and weak. Her body is limp. She weighs 17 kilograms (37 pounds).
"That's the weight of a 4-year-old," says Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, director of the pediatric department in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip. "She's not suffering from any disease, only malnutrition." Two months ago she weighed 24 kilograms, the girl's mother says.
Dr. al-Farra shows Bayan's protruding ribs, her scrawny hands. She squeezes his hand and manages to sit up during the examination, but her eyes are lifeless. He asks her to say something; she has to make an effort to say her name. During our conversation it emerges that the father of the family was wounded at the start of the war and lost a leg. Obtaining food became an impossible task.
"There is no food," the mother says, "and even if there is, we have no money to buy it."
