 "On Monday, the Israeli army pulled out of Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital after a two-week military operation that left much of the complex in ruins and bodies scattered on the dusty grounds Image Courtesy AFP")
The World Health Organization reported on Tuesday that newborn mortality is dramatically climbing in the Gaza Strip and that underweight newborns are being born there, citing local medical professionals.
“From different doctors, particularly in the maternity hospitals, they’re reporting that they’re seeing a big rise in children born with low birth weight, and just not surviving the neonatal period because they’re born too small,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said at a briefing in Geneva.
She said that at Kamal Adwan, the only paediatric hospital in northern Gaza, “at least 15 malnourished children are coming in per day, and the needs are just getting ever more severe”.
The destruction in the Palestinian territories following six months of warfare between Israel and Hamas prevents the WHO from establishing accurate figures on infant death, according to Harris, who also notes that many people do not even make it to hospitals.
She referenced a stabilization center that had been established the previous week, stating that the children who were admitted there were usually malnourished and unwell.
“If you have got an underlying condition, malnutrition will kill you much more quickly, so they become the most urgent patients,” she said.
On Monday, the Israeli army pulled out of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital after a two-week military operation that left much of the complex in ruins and bodies scattered on the dusty grounds.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe hospital was the biggest in the Palestinian territory.
“Al-Shifa Medical Complex is gone forever,” its acting director Marwaan Abu Saadah said in a WHO video filmed at the scene.
Harris added: “It’s no longer able to function in any shape or form as a hospital.”
“Destroying Al-Shifa means ripping the heart out of the health system,” she said, noting that it was a major hospital with 750 beds, 25 operating theatres and 30 intensive care wards.
Israel said it had battled Palestinian militants inside the complex, killing at least 200 and recovering stockpiles of weapons, explosives and cash.
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war erupted with Hamas’s October 7 attack, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,916 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
(With agency inputs)