NEW YORK CITY: The reproductive health crisis in Gaza and the West Bank will take “generations” to overcome, a senior UN official warned on Wednesday, citing soaring numbers of maternal deaths, mass malnutrition among pregnant women, and widespread psychological trauma affecting the youth of the territories.
Andrew Saberton, deputy executive director of the UN Population Fund, said after a visit to the region that the scale of the devastation women and girls face is “far worse than expected,” with critical services shattered and entire communities pushed beyond survival.
“Gaza has been flattened, mile upon mile of rubble and dust with few buildings left intact,” Saberton told reporters in New York. “This is not collateral damage and I cannot unsee what I saw. This is going to take generations to heal.”
Saberton painted a dire picture of the conditions for women and girls in Gaza, where one in four people are facing starvation, including 11,500 pregnant women, and 70 percent of newborns are now premature or of low birth weight. One in three pregnancies is considered high-risk.
“These are not isolated medical issues, these are generational threats to health and development,” he said.
