GAZA A 17-year-old was brought to a hospital in Gaza City shortly after Texas surgeon Mohammed Adeel Khaleel arrived in early August. He had been shot in the hand and both legs when he went to get food at an aid post.
According to Khaleel, he saw the teen’s ribs sticking out of his emaciated torso at the emergency room, which is a sign of acute malnutrition. The guy gestured to his empty lips with his tightly bandaged hand after Al-Ahli Hospital’s doctors stabilized him, Khaleel stated.
Suggested Videos
What is truly heartbreaking is the extent of hunger. Malnutrition was already beginning to occur back in November, you know. In an interview, Khaleel, a spinal surgeon on his third volunteer assignment in Gaza, stated that the current situation is simply unimaginable.
The foremost body on world hunger crises, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, declared for the first time on Friday that famine is occurring in sections of Gaza and warned that it is spreading. Experts, aid organizations, and U.N. agencies had been warning for months that Israel’s continuous offensive and blockade were driving the region to the verge of collapse.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is a division of the Hamas-run government and employs medical experts, eight persons in Gaza lost their lives to malnutrition-related reasons in the 24 hours after the famine proclamation, bringing the total number of such deaths throughout the conflict to 281. According to a U.S. medical nonprofit organization operating in Gaza, acute malnutrition affects one in six children under the age of five.
Israel denounced the famine statement as a blatant fabrication, citing its recent attempts to permit additional food imports following the lifting of a two-month embargo in May. The United Nations, which claims that Israeli restrictions and a breakdown of law and order make it very difficult to provide food to the most vulnerable, disputes the accusations that Hamas is siphoning off aid.
Speaking to The Associated Press prior to the revelation, Khaleel claimed that the proof of deprivation was already obvious.
only the extent of the malnutrition, post-operative problems, and weight loss that we are witnessing. Khaleel, who went to Gaza as an independent volunteer through the World Health Organization, stated, “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was called famine.”
Earlier in the week, Dr. Mohammad Kuheil, the nutrition director at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, escorted an AP reporter to the bedside of a girl with slender legs. An airstrike wounded 15-year-old Aya Sbeteh. But weakness from starvation, which her family claims has caused her weight to drop by more than a third, has hampered her recuperation.
Her father, 44-year-old Yousef Sbeteh, stated, “All we have are grains like lentils, sometimes.” Even flour is too expensive.
The most at risk are the young, the injured, and the ill.
Karam Akoumeh, another patient, was lying with sunken cheekbones and thin skin stretched over his rib cage like plastic wrap. According to his relatives, he was shot while out collecting flour, gravely damaging his intestines and jeopardizing his digestive system.
Due to a lack of intravenous nutritional supplements, he is currently one of 20 patients at Shifa who were brought in for abdominal wounds and are becoming more and more malnourished, the doctor stated.
Karam’s weight dropped from 62 kilograms (136 pounds) to merely 35 kilograms (77 pounds) due to hunger, which was exacerbated by the lack of vitamins, according to Akoumeh’s father, Atef.
I looked for it (the vitamins) at every hospital in Gaza, but I couldn’t find any,” he added.
According to Israeli officials, some of the people who allegedly perished from starvation had underlying medical issues. However, physicians and other specialists say that is to be expected because starvation initially targets the most vulnerable, such as infants and young children.
Hunger is evident everywhere, according to doctors and others.
Doctors and civilians claim the nutrient scarcity is just as severe outside the hospital.
Only plant-based protein from legumes is available; there are no other protein sources. No chicken or meat is offered. According to Kuheil, the physician in charge of nutrition at Shifa, there are no fruits or dairy items available.
Palestinians who had been displaced elsewhere described a frantic hunt for food in Gaza City on Friday.
We’re going hungry. We just eat once every day. Will our hunger be greater than it is now? “There’s nothing left,” said Dalia Shamali, whose family had been uprooted from their house in the neighboring town of Shijaiyah on multiple occasions.
According to her, they had spent the majority of their money over the past two years relocating throughout Gaza in response to evacuation orders from the Israeli military. The cost of wheat and other food products has been declining because Israel has allowed more food to enter the country, but the family is still unable to buy them, Shamali added.
Famine is predicted to expand, according to the Hunger Agency.
According to the IPC’s announcement on Friday, in the absence of a truce and a surge in humanitarian aid, starvation in Gaza City is likely to spread throughout the territory.
A nonprofit that plans medical missions to Gaza reported a devastating increase in acute malnutrition among pregnant women and children, echoing some of the IPC’s findings.
Based on observations made by its personnel in four of Gaza’s five governorates, the U.S. nonprofit MedGlobal said that acute malnutrition currently affects one in six children under the age of five in Gaza. All of Gaza’s young children could starve if nothing is done, the group warned.
The Texas physician, Khaleel, stated that he would let those with greater experience determine the precise definition of famine.
However, he is aware of what he witnessed during his three weeks of providing medical care in Gaza, primarily in the Gaza City hospital. Medical personnel repeatedly sliced open patients’ garments to tend to wounds, exposing a loss of muscle and fat brought on by starvation, which resulted in skin that was stretched taut over exposed bones.
Many of the individuals we’re seeing have really thin extremities and bare ribs,” he said. They simply aren’t receiving enough calories, you know.
___
New York was where Geller reported. This report was written by Sally Abou AlJoud of the Associated Press in Beirut, Lebanon.
