Since Israel began its aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, one child has been killed approximately every 12 minutes. In the same period, every 8 minutes, one child has been born in Gaza. Those children have been born into what their families and health workers describe as pure hell.
If they are not killed in an Israeli attack in the next 12 minutes, these children are facing a lifetime of trauma and other health issues caused by the aggression. The same is true for their mothers and pregnant women who will give birth in what is left of Gaza’s hospitals and shelters in the coming days. When it comes to maternity services in the Strip, there are virtually none left: at best, women give birth with the support of a midwife or doctor, after which they return to their tents straight away.
The tents, as stressed by activist and educator Shahd Abusalama to BreakThrough News, cannot protect people from anything, neither the cold nor the bombs. Testimonies from the ground, said Abusalama, “show scenes of parents holding their babies’ dead cold bodies who couldn’t tolerate the freezing cold of nights in Gaza.”
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All health services have been decimated by Israeli attacks, making it virtually impossible for people in need of urgent care, including women in labor, to reach hospitals and health centers. On Monday, January 22, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported Israel’s armed forces besieging the ambulance center in Khan Younis and bombardments around Al-Amal Hospital in the same area.
Standard maternity units mostly disappeared amid attacks by the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF). The maternity ward at Al-Aqsa Hospital, central Gaza, for example, “is not operating and is referring all pregnant women to Al-Awda Hospital, which is further away, putting patients at risk during the additional travel time,” according to an update by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) from January 19.
The lack of maternity services does not reflect only on those in need of immediate assistance during childbirth. It also means that those in earlier stages of pregnancy cannot count on checkups and medical advice. Since the beginning of the war, the rate of miscarriages has reportedly increased by some 300%. Health and humanitarian workers on the ground have also reported significant weight loss among pregnant women. They estimate that approximately 40% pregnancies in Gaza are to be considered high-risk.
Many of the women notice there is something wrong with their pregnancy, but health workers do not have the resources to do anything about it. “Due to the lack of prenatal services, pregnant women only know about the health of the fetus at birth,” psychologist Noor Abu Ruwaida told the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
Other women, again, do not live to see whether their children are born alive. Nurses in Gaza told UNICEF officer Tess Ingram how they had to perform cesarean sections on dead women: one of the nurses had performed such a procedure on six dead mothers in the past eight weeks.
Those who are not pregnant face yet another kind of problem. It has become virtually impossible to access menstrual hygiene products. “Menstrual pads are almost totally unobtainable,” health worker Wafa Abu Hasheish told IPPF. “Women are using pieces of cloth and placing plastic bags under them to avoid leakages on their clothing. At times, if they can find baby diapers they use them after cutting them into pieces.”
Latest reports indicate that women and girls sheltering in Rafah are now also forced to use tent scraps in place of period products, without access to adequate sanitation infrastructure. Life under constant bombardments and shelling, without access to hygiene essentials, is leading to intensifying feelings of depression and humiliation. Considering the pre-existing mental health burden among women in Gaza, the long-term effects are likely to be unparalleled.
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On top of it all, forcibly displaced women and children in Gaza are exposed to growing risks of outbreaks of communicable diseases. On January 18, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed it had detected Hepatitis A in Gaza’s shelters.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, some 8,000 cases of Hepatitis A have been confirmed by the same date, mostly among children. While Hepatitis A is usually mild, it can cause serious problems, particularly in pregnant women. And, although infections can be treated, it is necessary to secure adequate conditions for that. Patients infected with Hepatitis A need isolation and a diet rich in vegetables and fruits. Both things are impossible to obtain in Gaza right now, physician Salah Al-Jabari told Al-Haq organization.
Hepatitis A is not the only disease that appeared amid forced displacement and overcrowding. The Ministry of Health recorded 626,000 cases of communicable diseases by January 18 in southern Gaza alone. The northern areas remain out of reach for public health services because of Israeli operations and lack of security guarantees by the IOF to international humanitarian missions.
The overall number of infections includes 250,000 cases of mumps, 180,000 cases of respiratory infections, and 135,000 cases of diarrhea – all diseases that can be addressed in the context of an operational health system and basic living conditions. People in the Gaza Strip, of course, do not have access to those essentials, meaning that the diseases could be fatal. At the moment, doctors are teaching parents to add salt and lemon to water to replace missing rehydration solutions for children with diarrhea and dehydration. Salt, lemon, and water are in short supply, too.
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People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.
