Babies, many premature, and only a few days old, battle for their lives on the malnutrition ward of The Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza.
Because mothers are too undernourished to nurse, babies are starving to death as a result of their mothers’ inability to provide the essential nutrients that newborns require.
“In just two weeks, we found over 250 patients who were malnourished,” says the hospital’s director, Dr. Hassam Abu Safah.
“Since this was first discovered at our hospital, the total number will probably rise in the days to come. We beg that food and clean water be let to enter the planet.”
The body of a baby that didn’t pull through lies in a hospital incubator, awaiting burial. She was born two months premature because her mother was so exhausted.
Too soon for her parents to even name her. Her tiny body is now wrapped in a green shroud.
Another struggles for each breath, the bones of her exposed rib cage heave up and down with the little strength she has to keep living. Their nappies dwarf their skeletal bodies.
