LONDON: Instead of walking to school or playing in the park, Gaza’s children run from bombs. At night, many sleep on bare ground with only a thin sheet separating them from skies lit by explosions. Parents say their children no longer dream of toys but of bread and a warm bed.
While many toddlers around the world are learning to take their first steps and speak their first words, 18-month-old Mohammed arrived at the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society Hospital in Gaza City in July “nearly lifeless,” doctors diagnosed.
Under Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid, the Palestinian toddler had lost a third of his body weight. He weighed just 6 kg, or about 13 pounds. Volunteers with MedGlobal, a US-based medical charity, said he was severely malnourished when they began treating him.
As his small body withered, “he stopped making happy sounds, stopped laughing, and instead started crying all day,” his mother told doctors. Amid the thunder of airstrikes and the collapse of daily life, her only focus was keeping him alive.
Mohammed’s case is just one among thousands. MedGlobal found that 16.8 percent of children under the age of 5 in four Gaza governorates are suffering acute malnutrition — a 2,000 percent increase from prewar levels.
