Like most babies, Sela Majdi Barbakh liked to laugh. But his smile was weak and faded quickly. At 11 months, Sela must weigh around 20 pounds, but weighs only 8. His thin limbs moved apádicically, and his little hand could barely understand the finger of the nurse who tended to her.
“She is losing weight continuously,” said her mother, Najah Hashem Barbakh, 36, to the NBC News team on the ground in Gaza. Barbakh said he knew about four other children who had died in the same room in the Pediatric Room of the Nasser Hospital of Khan Younis. She feared that Sela was next.
Sela is one of the thousands of children in the Gaza Strip that suffers from acute malnutrition as the Israeli authorities continue to restrict the entry of aid, including the baby’s formula. Doctors, help groups and Palestinians say that the long -term hunger crisis has reached a turning point, with deaths from arising malnutrition.
In the last 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza registered nine deaths from malnutrition, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Friday in a statement, which caused the total number of deaths due to malnutrition from the beginning of the war to 122, including 83 children.
Sela is malnourished and has lost all its muscle and fat, said Dr. Ahmad al-Fara, head of the Hospital Pediatric Department, added that he suffered from vitamin D and iron deficiencies.
“She is one of the extreme examples of malnutrition,” he said. “She is just the skin on the bone.”
Barbakh said he brought Sela to the hospital for 10 days, after his family ran out of food and water.
“I was breastfeeding naturally at the beginning, but finally I stopped producing milk,” he said, Because “I had no food or water to nourish me.”
She changed to the formula, “but now that is not available either.”
On Wednesday, the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, its sexual and reproductive health agency, said the humanitarian situation that develops in Gaza was leading to “catastrophic results of birth for pregnant and newborn women, threatening the survival of an entire generation.”
Citing new data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, UNFPA discovered that the number of babies born in Gaza had declined sharply in the first six months of the year, falling by 41%, of 29,000 births in the same period in 2022 to 17,000.
Many of the newborns are in a state of crisis. At least 20 babies have died within 24 hours later, the UNFPA said, while 33% were born prematurely, low weight or entry to neonatal intensive care is required.
Another UN report published Thursday said that 9% of Gaza’s children are severely malnourished.
“Now we are witnessing a deadly increase in deaths related to malnutrition,” said Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference on Wednesday, adding that since July 17, severe acute malnutrition centers are full, “without sufficient supplies for emergency feed.”
Barbakh, who was displaced from his house in Khan Younis and now lives in a narrow store with six other family members, said that the food in Gaza has become extremely scarce, and the little that is available in the markets is exorbitantly expensive.
“A single can of formula milk costs 170 Shekels ($ 51), and I can’t pay it for my daughter,” he said.
Another malnourished babies at Nasser Hospital was Ramaa 5 months, with a pink floral dress that wrinkled around her slight frame.
She was born with a weight of 6 pounds and still does. “Its weight remains the same; it has not increased, even by a gram,” said his mother, Naglaa Waleed Abou Aia, 33, to the NBC news team in Gaza.
Until about two months ago, Waleed Abou Aia said that Ramaa “was naturally breastfeeding, but I am suffering from malnutrition due to the lack of food and water, so the child was malnourished.”
Walking around the room, Elidalis Burgos, a nurse of American critical care as a volunteer at the Nasser hospital, He visited several babies and children. A child with an orange shirt lay in a crib, its limbs and their face were bandaged after being injured by a strike that killed his family. A month later, the angles of his bones were visible under his thin skin.
“It suffers many wounds and severe malnutrition,” said Burgos, “as the blockade has not allowed any nutrition for anyone. Without that, it will be very difficult for a good prognosis.”
Israel says that food aid is entering Gaza, but it is not being distributed by help groups, but those groups say it is not enough.
Burgos said he had witnessed the formula of the Israeli baby that brought the baby’s formula brought by international help workers, doctors and nurses from his non -governmental medical agency Glia.
“Even as humanitarian workers, what we try to bring, it is thrown,” he said, adding: “We are not allowed to bring food or formula for babies or children here.”
Israel’s defense forces did not immediately respond to the NBC News request to comment on the latest UN finds or about the serious shortage of baby formula in Gaza. He did not respond when asked about Burgos’ account that the soldiers had discarded the formula of babies brought by humanitarian workers.
He maintains that he has allowed Gaza for help, blaming the UN and Hamas for not guaranteeing their delivery. The UN spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, denied that claim on Thursday, blaming Israel for the lack of delivery.
Najah Hashem Barbakh, Sela’s mother, said he hadn’t eaten anything all day. But, he said, mortal hunger was approaching the most vulnerable first. “I keep telling myself: ‘I can endure, but my children can’t'”.
