Unprecedented hunger crisis’: MSF warns of acute malnutrition in Gaza

Doctors Without Borders warned on Friday that severe malnutrition levels in Gaza, which is surrounded and war-torn, were increasing.

The medical charity, known by the French abbreviation MSF, reported that acute malnutrition has reached a “all-time high” at two of its Gaza Strip sites.

In a statement, the organisation said that “MSF teams are witnessing a sharp and unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition among people in Gaza”.

“In Al-Mawasi clinic, southern Gaza, and the MSF Gaza Clinic in the north, we are seeing the highest number of malnutrition cases ever recorded by our teams in the Strip.”

MSF said it now had more than 700 pregnant and breastfeeding women and nearly 500 children with severe and moderate malnutrition currently enrolled in ambulatory therapeutic feeding centres in both clinics.

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The numbers at the Gaza City clinic had almost quadrupled in under two months, from 293 cases in May to 983 cases at the start of this month, it said.

“This is the first time we have witnessed such a severe scale of malnutrition cases in Gaza,” Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, MSF’s deputy medical coordinator in Gaza, said in the statement.

‘Intentional’ starvation

“The starvation of people in Gaza is intentional,” he charged, insisting that “it can end tomorrow if the Israeli authorities allow food in at scale”.

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Starting in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months, leading to warnings of famine across a territory widely flattened by Israeli bombing since Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel began allowing food supplies to trickle in at the end of May, but using a new US- and Israel-backed organisation called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

That group’s operations, which effectively sidelined a vast UN aid delivery network in Gaza, have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people waiting to collect rations.

The UN said Friday that at least 615 people had been killed in the vicinity of GHF sites since May 27. The organisation itself denies that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.

MSF maintained Friday that “the existence of malnutrition in Gaza is the result of deliberate, calculated choices by the Israeli authorities”.

They have decided, it said, to “restrict the entry of food to the bare minimum for survival, dictate and militarise the means of its subsequent distribution, all while having destroyed the majority of local food production capacity”.

MSF described how injured patients at its clinics warned that its malnourished patients were “begging for food instead of medicine, their wounds failing to close due to protein deficiency”.

Far more babies were also being born prematurely, while six-month pregnant women often weighed no more than 40 kilos (88 pounds), it said.

“The situation is beyond critical,” said MSF doctor Joanne Perry.