Gaza Strip, Gaza City (AP) – Texas surgeon Mohamed Adir Karel soon arrived Gaza city In early August, the 17-year-old, who was brought in with a gunshot wound in both legs and one hand, persisted when he went to collect food at the aid site.
In the emergency room, Carell said he noticed a rib protruding from the teenager’s castrated torso. Signs of severe malnutrition. When doctors at Al-Ahli hospital stabilized the patient, he raised his heavily bandaged hand and pointed at his empty mouth, Khaleel said.
“The level of hunger is really heartbreaking. You know, we’ve seen malnutrition before, but it started to happen in November. But now the levels are beyond imagination.”
Friday, the IPC, the integrated food security stage classification, or the key authority on the global hunger crisis; It was the first time I said it That part of Gaza was in hunger and warned that it was spreading. For months, UN agencies, aid groups and experts warned that Israeli lockdowns and ongoing attacks were pushing the territory to the brink.
In the 24 hours after the announcement of hunger, eight people in Gaza died of malnutrition-related causes, bringing the overall sacrifice of such deaths during the war to 281, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. A US medical nonprofit working in Gaza says one in six children under the age of five is affected by acute malnutrition.
Israel rejected the announcement of hunger, calling it a “complete lie,” pointing to recent efforts to allow more food after easing a full two-month lockdown in May. Accuse Hamas of quitting aid – allegations disputed by the United Nations say Israeli restrictions and the collapse of law and order Make it very difficult to deliver food To the most vulnerable.
Speaking to the Associated Press prior to the announcement, Carrell said evidence of the deprivation was already clear.
“It’s just the weight loss, the postoperative complications, the level of starvation we’re seeing. If it’s called hunger, it wouldn’t be a surprise at all,” said Kariel, who traveled to Gaza as an independent volunteer through the World Health Organization.
Earlier in the week at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Nutrition Director Dr. Mohammad Kuhail led the AP journalist to the bedside of a thin, slimy girl. Aya Sbeteh, 15, was injured in an airstrike. However, her recovery has been receding due to weakness due to a lack of food, which says her family has lost more than a third of her weight.
“All we have is sometimes lentil-like grain,” her father, Yousef Sbeteh, 44.
Sick people, injuries and young people are the most vulnerable
Another patient, Kalum Accome, lay on his sinking cheek, his thin skin stretching like a wrap around his rib cage. Compromising his digestive system, his family was seriously injured when he was shot to collect flour.
He is now one of Shifa’s 20 people brought in due to abdominal wounds, and is becoming more and more malnourished due to a lack of intravenous dietary supplements, the doctor said.
Akoumeh’s father Atef said the lack of supplements had exacerbated the hunger that reduced Karam’s weight from 62 kilograms (136 pounds) to just 35 kg (77 pounds).
“I checked all the hospitals (supplements) in Gaza and found nothing,” he said.
Israeli officials point out that some of the people who are said to have died of malnutrition are in preexisting conditions. But doctors and other experts say that it should be expected as hunger preys on the most vulnerable people first. Including babies and small children.
Doctors and others see signs of hunger everywhere
Outside hospitals, nutrient deficiencies are equally disastrous, doctors and civilians say.
“There is no protein source, only plant-based protein from legumes. Meat and chicken are not available. Dairy products are not available, fruits are not available.”
In Gaza city on Friday, Palestinians were kicked out of other locations and spoke about a desperate search for food.
“We’re hungry. We eat once a day. Are we hungry more than we are now? There’s nothing left,” the family was repeatedly kicked out of their nearby home in Shijaiya.
She said that the Israeli forces have spent most of their money moving from one part of Gaza to another over the past two years as they issued evacuation orders. Prices for flour and other groceries have fallen as Israel has allowed more food recently, but families can’t afford them yet, Shamali said.
Hanger Agency says hunger is expected to spread
In a announcement Friday, the IPC said hunger in Gaza is likely to spread across the territory without a ceasefire and flooding of humanitarian assistance.
Some of the IPC conclusions were reflected in reports of groups organising medical missions in Gaza, which described a “devastating rise in severe malnutrition” between children and pregnant women.
One in every six children under the age of five in Gaza is affected by acute malnutrition, a report from the US nonprofit Medglobal said, based on observations by four staff members of the five governors of Gaza. The group warned that all young children in Gaza are at risk of starvation without intervention.
Texas physician Carrell said he would leave it to others with more expertise to accurately measure what constitutes hunger.
But he knows what he saw in Gaza city hospitals mostly in the three weeks after treating patients in Gaza. Many times, healthcare workers have cut patients’ clothing open and cut to treat injuries, revealing muscle and fat loss caused by hunger, which stretches firmly over protruding bones.
“These patients, many of the patients we see, are exposed ribs, very thin extremities,” he said. “And you know they’re just not getting calories.”
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Geller reported from New York. Associated Press writer Sally Abou Aljoud in Beirut, Lebanon, contributed to this report.
