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malnutrition
Medical Teams Still Struggling to Treat Gaza Malnutrition Crisis 'Entirely Manufactured' by Israel
"Every six months, we might get a food parcel once. It's barely enough," said one mother. "We are forced to eat whatever is in front of us."
May 07, 2026
A ceasefire was declared between Israel and Hamas seven months ago, but just as the deal has not stopped the killing of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, it has failed to alleviate the acute malnutrition crisis that was created when Israel began blocking almost all humanitarian aid in October 2023.
The international aid group Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), on Wednesday accused Israel of imposing a "manufactured malnutrition crisis" that is proving particularly devastating for pregnant and breastfeeding women, newborns, and infants.
At four clinics operated by MSF in Gaza between late 2024 and early 2026, medical teams found higher levels of miscarriage among mothers who experienced malnutrition.
The group also analyzed data on 201 mothers of newborns who required treatment in neonatal intensive care units at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Helou Hospital in Gaza City between June 2025 and this past January. More than half of the mothers had been affected by malnutrition at some point in their pregnancy.
Ninety percent of the babies had been born prematurely and 84% had low birth weight.
"Neonatal mortality was twice as high among infants born to mothers affected by malnutrition compared to those born to mothers without malnutrition," said MSF.
Samar Abu Mustafa, a displaced mother from Abasan al-Kabira, said she was diagnosed with malnutrition while pregnant with her 3-month-old baby.
"I don't know how I will provide diapers and milk, nor how I will provide food for my other daughters. There is no income and no support," said Abu Mustafa. "There is nothing apart from food parcels from the World Food Program and community kitchens. Every six months, we might get a food parcel once. It's barely enough. It is all rice and lentils. We are forced to eat whatever is in front of us."
"For a long time, we haven't eaten anything nutritious and the baby does not get enough milk from me, so I am forced to provide formula, but I don’t have money for it," she said. "I have just one remaining can of milk."
Mercè Rocaspana, MSF's medical referent for emergencies, emphasized that malnutrition in the exclave was "almost nonexistent" before Israel began bombarding Gaza and blocking humanitarian aid—an action Israeli and US officials persistently claimed Israel was not taking before the ceasefire was reached, even as the number of deaths from starvation climbed to nearly 500.
“The malnutrition crisis is entirely manufactured,” said Rocaspana. "For two and a half years, the systematic blockade of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, on top of insecurity, have severely restricted access to food and clean water. Healthcare facilities have been forced out of service and living conditions have profoundly deteriorated. As a result, vulnerable groups of people are at heightened risk of malnutrition.”
Before the war, there were no dedicated therapeutic medical feeding units in Gaza's hospitals, but MSF teams admitted more than 500 infants under six months of age to outpatient feeding programs between October 2024-December 2025—programs that the bombardment has made impossible for many families to complete.
"Of those admitted, 91% were at risk of poor growth and development. By December, 200 infants were no longer in the program—only 48% of them were cured, while 7% died, another 7% were referred to a program for older children, and a staggering 32% defaulted due in part to insecurity and displacement."
The 20-point ceasefire agreement stipulated that at least 600 aid trucks must enter Gaza daily and that border crossings must be reopened, but as Common Dreams reported in April, five leading aid groups gave "humanitarian aid access" a failing grade in a scorecard rating conditions in Gaza six months after the deal was reached.
Israel was still restricting deliveries, and food items sold in Gaza were anywhere from 3% to 233% more expensive than they were before the war started.
Al Jazeera's Hind Khoury reported Thursday that only 150 aid trucks are being allowed in daily.
Last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that while there's been a 72% increase in the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire was brokered, 11% of coordinated humanitarian missions are still being denied.
"Many lives have been saved in Gaza because of scaled up humanitarian effort since the ceasefire. But much more to do: We need to sustain access, protection of civilians, neutrality, and partnership," said Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs.
Gaza: Six months into the ceasefire, hunger continues to shape daily life and malnutrition levels remain high.@WFP is on the ground supporting those most in need, but aid alone is not enough for full recovery. pic.twitter.com/gABZySEjFI
— United Nations (@UN) May 6, 2026
Sahar Nafez Salem, who lives with her children in a tent in Khan Younis, told MSF that her family has been relying on a charity kitchen to eat.
"We eat lunch from it and save some for dinner," she said. "We try to manage getting lunch for our poor children every Friday, so we can bring them joy, but all week long, almost everything is from charity kitchens... The last time I received aid was during Ramadan... There is rice and lentils... Other things, like vegetables, are expensive. We can't get them all the time. So sometimes we go without vegetables for months."
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Land Degradation Threatens Billions of Lives Worldwide, Warns UN Food Agency
"Sustainable land management requires enabling environments that support long-term investment, innovation, and stewardship," said the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Nov 03, 2025
A report published Monday by a United Nations agency revealed that nearly 1 in 5 people on Earth live in regions affected by failing crop yields driven by human-induced land degradation, “a pervasive and silent crisis that is undermining agricultural productivity and threatening ecosystem health worldwide."
According to the latest UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) State of Food and Agriculture report, "Today, nearly 1.7 billion people live in areas where land degradation contributes to yield losses and food insecurity."
"These impacts are unevenly distributed: In high-income countries, degradation is often masked by intensive input use, while in low-income countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, yield gaps are driven by limited access to inputs, credit, and markets," the publication continues. "The convergence of degraded land, poverty, and malnutrition creates vulnerability hotspots that demand urgent, targeted and, comprehensive responses."
#LandDegradation threatens land's ability to sustain us. The good news: Reversing 10% of degraded cropland can produce food for an additional 154 million people.
▶️Learn how smarter policies & greener practices can turn agriculture into a force for land restoration.
#SOFA2025 pic.twitter.com/8U3yQk9lX4
— Food and Agriculture Organization (@FAO) November 3, 2025
In order to measure land degradation, the report's authors compared three key indicators of current conditions in soil organic carbon, soil erosion, and soil water against conditions that would exist without human alteration of the environment. That data was then run through a machine-learning model that considers environmental and socioeconomic factors driving change to estimate the land’s baseline state without human activity.
Land supports over 95% of humanity's food production and provides critical ecosystem services that sustain life on Earth. Land degradation—which typically results from a combination of factors including natural drivers like soil erosion and salizination and human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing, and unsustainable irrigation practices—threatens billions of human and other lives.
The report notes the importance of land to living beings:
Since the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago, land has played a central role in sustaining civilizations. As the fundamental resource of agrifood systems, it interacts with natural systems in complex ways, influencing soil quality, water resources, and biodiversity, while securing global food supplies and supporting the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Biophysically, it consists of a range of components including soil, water, flora, and fauna, and provides numerous ecosystem services including nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and water purification, all of which are subject to climate and weather conditions.
Socioeconomically, land supports many sectors such as agriculture, forestry, livestock, infrastructure development, mining, and tourism. Land is also deeply woven into the cultures of humanity, including those of Indigenous peoples, whose unique agrifood systems are a profound expression of ancestral lands and territories, waters, nonhuman relatives, the spiritual realm, and their collective identity and self-determination. Land, therefore, functions as the basis for human livelihoods and well-being.
"At its core, land is an essential resource for agricultural production, feeding billions of people worldwide and sustaining employment for millions of agrifood workers," the report adds. "Healthy soils, with their ability to retain water and nutrients, underpin the cultivation of crops, while pastures support livestock; together they supply diverse food products essential to diets and economies."
The report recommends steps including reversing 10% of all human-caused land degradation on existing cropland by implementing crop rotation and other sustainable management practices, which the authors say could produce enough food to feed an additional 154 million people annually.
"Reversing land degradation on existing croplands through sustainable land use and management could close yield gaps to support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of producers," FAO Director-General Dongyu Qu wrote in the report’s foreword. "Additionally, restoring abandoned cropland could feed hundreds of millions more people."
"These findings represent real opportunities to improve food security, reduce pressure on natural ecosystems, and build more resilient agrifood systems," Qu continued. "To seize these opportunities, we must act decisively. Sustainable land management requires enabling environments that support long-term investment, innovation, and stewardship."
"Secure land tenure—for both individuals and communities—is essential," he added. "When land users have confidence in their rights, they are more likely to invest in soil conservation, crop diversity and productivity."
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To Fight Famine, 100+ Dems Call on Rubio to Surge Baby Formula, Other Aid Into Gaza
"Parents know the pain of a hungry baby's cry," said Rep. Ayanna Pressley. "Imagine, instead of fumbling for a bottle, a military blockade is preventing you from feeding your child."
Aug 26, 2025
With the number of Palestinian children who have been killed by Israel's blockade on humanitarian rising each day, more than 100 Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday called on the Trump administration to show "moral clarity" and demand that the Israeli government allow "a massive surge in humanitarian aid to enter Gaza," including shipments of baby formula.
U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) led 101 of their colleagues in writing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, saying they were appealing to him not only in his "capacity as a government official but as a parent" as they warned that 20,000 children in Gaza have been treated for malnutrition since April, following Israel's decision to once again block all humanitarian aid from entering the enclave.
"Parents know the pain of a hungry baby's cry," said Pressley. "Imagine, instead of fumbling for a bottle, a military blockade is preventing you from feeding your child."
The letter came days after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) announced last week that portions of Gaza are now experiencing a "Phase 5" famine—after months of ignored warnings from human rights groups and United Nations agencies that the enclave's human-caused starvation crisis was rapidly worsening.
Pressley, Pettersen, and their colleagues said that as of their writing, at least 85 children were among those that have starved to death in Gaza; on Tuesday the Gaza Health MInistry reported that at least 303 Palestinians, including 117 children, have been killed by Israel's blockade.
"Infants in particular are especially vulnerable to death by starvation and are dying of malnutrition," said the lawmakers. "The lack of food and aid writ large means mothers do not have the basic nutrition required to sustain breastfeeding, rendering formula the only option for infant survival in many cases."
They emphasized that the only aid operations Israel is currently allowing—the distribution of aid boxes by the US-backed, privatized Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—have "delivered only a tiny fraction of the aid that could be delivered by the previous UN-coordinated distribution system," and has not included the allocation of baby formula.
Seeking aid at GHF hubs has also proven deadly for close to 1,000 Palestinians, as Israeli soldiers have reported that they've been ordered to shoot at civilians who approach the sites—even as Israel and its top military funder, the US government, persist in claiming the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) does not target civilians.
The Trump administration has also continued to parrot claims that Hamas is to blame for the famine in Gaza, even after the IDF admitted in July that there is no evidence that the group is stealing or diverting aid.
Since late May, wrote the lawmakers on Tuesday, an average of just 69 trucks per day have brought humanitarian aid from the UN into Gaza—far below the 500-600 trucks needed to meet humanitarian aid.
"As a result, Gaza is currently facing a dire shortage of baby formula, depriving infants of what is their only hope against starvation," said Pressley, Pettersen, and their colleagues.
In July, primary care doctor and public health expert Yipeng Ge described how his colleagues "have had baby formula confiscated by the Israeli military as they enter Gaza."
"These are not isolated incidents, but a systemic policy of genocide," said the doctor.
UN agencies have emphasized for months that trucks filled with aid, including pallets of formula, are languishing just across Gaza's borders.
"This crisis is not one of funding or resources, but of access and political will," wrote the lawmakers. "While we push for a long-lasting resolution and we are devastated that previous ceasefires were not upheld, we believe it is absolutely necessary to prioritize the safe delivery of the pallets of baby formula, specifically ready-to-feed formula, sitting at the border of Gaza to ensure that we do not lose another newborn or infant to starvation."
"All crossing points should immediately be reopened for the entry of humanitarian aid and allowed to operate simultaneously and
consistently," wrote the lawmakers, "and the Israeli government must take additional steps to vastly scale up the amount of aid allowed in through existing crossings and expand movement and access for international aid organizations throughout the Gaza Strip must also be taken, so that they can deliver this aid without diversion."
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Death, Lost Limbs, and Starvation: Gaza Children Suffer Unimaginably as World Continues to 'Look Away'
More than 17,000 children have been reported killed over the past 20 months of bombardment by Israel. But that figure only scratches the surface of the suffering being inflicted.
Jul 16, 2025
Several new reports from the United Nations have once again highlighted the horrific toll Israel's genocidal military onslaught has taken on the children of Gaza.
More than 17,000 children have been reported killed over the past 20 months. But that figure only scratches the surface of the suffering being inflicted.
Reports released this week detailed overwhelming malnourishment among children due to Israel's blockade of food entering the strip. Meanwhile, children losing limbs from war wounds is a daily occurrence.
As The Guardian's editorial board wrote yesterday, "a classroom-worth of children have been killed each day since the war began." Over just the past week, there have been multiple horrific massacres in which children were killed.
On Sunday, six children were killed by an Israeli drone strike while waiting to collect water, deaths Israel attributed to a "technical error." The Thursday before that, another 10 children were killed by an airstrike as they lined up outside a hospital waiting for nutritional supplements and treatment.
As The Guardian noted, these children were in such positions as a result of Israel's deliberate strangulation of their access to the resources needed to live:
Those six thirsty children should not have needed to queue for water due to what the UN calls a human-made drought. Human Rights Watch believes that thousands of Palestinians have died due to Israel's deliberate pattern of actions to deprive them of water, which it alleges amounts to the crime against humanity of extermination as well as acts of genocide.
Those 10 hungry children should not have required nutritional supplements, but Israel continues to choke off aid and civilians are starving.
On Tuesday, UNRWA reported that 1 in 10 of the children screened in its clinics suffer from acute malnutrition.
"Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March," UNRWA's director of communications, Juliette Touma, told reporters in Geneva via a video link from Amman, Jordan.
"One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries," Touma said. "Medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out."
In a post on UNRWA's blog, Touma wrote:
There are very little therapeutic supplies to treat children with malnutrition as basics are scarce in Gaza. The Israeli authorities have imposed a tight siege blocking the entry of food, medicines, medical and nutritional supplies and hygiene material includ[ing] soap. While the siege is sometimes eased, UNRWA (the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza) has not been allowed to bring in humanitarian assistance since 2 March.
She said that UNRWA has more than 6,000 aid trucks waiting for the "green light" from Israeli authorities, who continue to block them.
"Why should babies die of malnutrition in the 21st century, especially when it's totally preventable?" she asked.
Another report from the U.N.-sponsored Global Protection Cluster found that in addition to the 17,000 children reported dead, more than 40,000 have war-related disabilities. A quarter of those require acute or ongoing rehabilitation.
It found that on average, "10 children per day lose one or both of their legs" as a result of ongoing attacks by Israeli forces.
In December, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reported that "Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world—many losing limbs and undergoing surgeries without even anesthesia."
This is due in part to the war's effects on Gaza's hospitals, just 47% of which remain partially functional due to destruction by the Israeli military and supply shortages caused by the blockade.
"Gaza’s shattered health system is overwhelmed—and aid is being blocked by the government of Israel. The world cannot continue to look away," said UNRWA in a post Tuesday.
With the backing of the United States, Israel has banned UNRWA staff from entering the Gaza Strip since March, citing uncorroborated accusations that 19 out of UNRWA's approximately 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.
Since then, aid infrastructure in the strip has been largely demolished, with most of it now directed by the U.S.-Israeli-administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. More than 870 people have been killed in massacres at these aid sites.
"The U.N., including UNRWA and partners, must be allowed to do their work and bring in humanitarian assistance at scale, including for children, said Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general. "Any additional delay to a cease-fire now will cause more deaths."
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5,800+ Gaza Children Diagnosed With Malnutrition in June: UNICEF
"Children's bodies are wasting away," the agency said. "This is not just a nutrition crisis. It's a child survival emergency."
Jul 14, 2025
More than 5,800 children in the Gaza Strip were diagnosed with malnutrition in June alone amid Israel's ongoing U.S.-backed siege and annihilation of the Palestinian territory, the United Nations Children's Fund said Sunday.
According to the UNICEF, at least 5,870 malnourished children in Gaza were hospitalized last month for urgent treatment, including more than 1,000 cases of severe malnutrition, the most lethal form of the ailment. Malnutrition diagnoses have increased in Gaza over each of the past four months. In May, 5,119 children between 6 months and 5 years of age suffering acute malnutrition were admitted for treatment in Gaza, as Common Dreams reported.
"Child malnutrition in Gaza is rising fast," the agency warned in a statement. "Children's bodies are wasting away. This is not just a nutrition crisis. It's a child survival emergency."
Gaza medical officials said late last month that more than 300 Palestinians—including many children and elders—had recently died from malnutrition and lack of medical care due to Israel's siege and bombing. The Gaza Health Ministry says at least 67 children have died of starvation since October 2023, when Israeli forces began obliterating the enclave in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
In addition to blocking food and other humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, Israel Defense Forces troops have killed more than 800 people at or near food distribution points run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. IDF officers and soldiers say they were ordered to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of desperate aid-seekers.
In recent days, Israeli forces have also massacred children and others queued up for malnutrition treatment at an international charity clinic in Deir al-Balah and waiting for water in the al-Nuseirat refugee camp. The IDF attributed the latter attack to a "technical error."
More than 310 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East staffers have also been killed by Israeli forces since the start of the Gaza onslaught.
Israel's forced starvation of Gaza has been condemned by numerous national governments, progressive members of U.S. Congress, international human rights groups, and United Nations experts, who have called the policy genocidal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
Israel's policies and practices in Gaza are also the subject of a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice, which has ordered tIsrael to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and to allow humanitarian aid into the strip. Israel has been accused of ignoring these orders. Israeli leaders including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have called for the bombing of Gaza humanitarian aid depots and IDF soldiers—who purportedly fight for the "word's most moral army"—have posted videos on social media celebrating or mocking the starvation of Palestinians.
Since October 2023, at least 58,386 Palestinians have been killed and more than 139,000 wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures have been found to be accurate or an undercount by peer-reviewed studies. At least 14,000 people are also missing. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times.
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10 Children Among at Least 17 Killed in Israeli Bombing of Gaza Charity Clinic Queue
"This is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza," said the head of Project HOPE.
Jul 10, 2025
An Israeli strike on Palestinians waiting in line outside a charity clinic in central Gaza killed at least 17 people including 10 children Thursday, a day that saw scores more Gazans killed throughout the embattled enclave.
The Palestinians were killed even as progress was made toward a cease-fire agreement, with Hamas agreeing to release 10 hostages held since October 2023.
Eyad Amawi, director of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, told The Washington Post that the facility received the bodies of at least 17 victims of the strike on the Altayara Clinic, which is operated by Project HOPE, a Washington, D.C.-based humanitarian aid group. More than 30 others were wounded in the attack.
Drop Site News published the names and ages of 15 people killed in the strike, who include seven preteen children and toddlers.
Warning: The "show more" link in the following social media post shows images of death.
"The scene was so painful, more than you can imagine," local journalist Dua al-Hazarin told the Post.
According to the newspaper:
In footage [al-Hazarin] took and shared on social media, dust rises from the streets as the high-pitched wails and screams of children ring out. Women gather around the body of a child with blood seeping from his head. Elsewhere, bodies lie on the ground with pools of blood around them. One bloodied little girl is motionless in a pink dress. Next to her is a man hunched over, with blood seeping from his head. A woman lies still. Their conditions are unclear. The camera continues to pan over more bodies, many of them children, collapsed across the pavement.
Victims were waiting in line to receive treatment for chronic illnesses, infections, and malnutrition amid an ongoing starvation crisis caused by Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza, which officials say has caused the deaths of hundreds of residents, many of them children and infants, since October 2023. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported last month that more than 5,000 Gazan children under the age of 5 were treated for malnutrition in May alone.
"Project HOPE's health clinics are a place of refuge in Gaza where people bring their small children, women access pregnancy and postpartum care, people receive treatment for malnutrition, and more," Rabih Torbay, the charity's CEO, said in a statement. "Yet, this morning, innocent families were mercilessly attacked as they stood in line waiting for the doors to open."
"This is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza, even as cease-fire talks continue," Torbay added. "This cannot continue. Project HOPE urgently calls for an immediate cease-fire, unimpeded humanitarian access, and a dramatic scale-up of aid to meet the urgent needs of Gaza's civilian population."
No Project HOPE staff were harmed in the strike, which occurred before the clinic opened in the morning. The charity said it would indefinitely suspend operations at the Altayara Clinic "as a precautionary measure." The attack was at least the second one targeting a Project HOPE clinic in Gaza during the war.
Hundreds of humanitarian aid workers have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since during the U.S.-backed annihilation of the coastal strip, including over 300 members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East as well as staff of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen, and other organizations.
Near-daily massacres of Palestinian aid-seekers at distribution points operated by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have also killed nearly 800 people, according to sources including the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers and troops have admitted to receiving orders to fire guns and artillery at aid-seekers, regardless of whether they posed any security threat.
An IDF spokesperson told Haaretz that Thursday's Altayara Clinic strike targeted a member of Hamas' elite Nukhba force who took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. The spokesperson said the IDF is investigating the incident, and that it "regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians and works to minimize such harm as much as possible."
However, following the October 7 attack the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking.
As a result, the majority of the at least 57,680 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been women and children, with the high civilian death toll prompting South Africa to file a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation.
UNICEF—which condemned Thursday's massacre—said in late May that more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded by Israeli attacks in Gaza, which the U.N. agency has called "the world's most dangerous place to be a child."
The Gaza Health Ministry said aThursday that at least 82 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, including strikes on the crowded Nuseirat Market, a tent encampment housing forcibly displaced people on the outskirts of Khan Younis, and an apartment building in Gaza City.
Meanwhile, Hamas said Thursday that it would release 10 hostages kidnapped during the October 7 attack as part of a "commitment to the success" of ongoing negotiations for a cease-fire in the 21-month onslaught, a development that followed meetings between Netanyahu and U.S. leaders including President Donald Trump earlier this week to discuss a potential deal to end Israel's assault. The leaders also discussed an Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from throughout Gaza and concentrate them in a camp outside the ruins of the southern city of Rafah.
Trump said Wednesday that there was a "very good chance" of a cease-fire deal being reached, possibly as early as later this week. However, Netanyahu has scuppered past cease-fire efforts as they have neared the finish line—moves some critics say are meant to prolong the war in order to delay a reckoning in his ongoing criminal corruption trial.
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War Makes the World Sick... Literally
The body of a single child, wasting away from the lack of the basic fluid that runs in my sink or yours, best captures the way war casualties ripple across time and populations.
Jul 09, 2025
War kills in so many ways. These days, Americans are bombarded with images from Gaza and elsewhere of people or broken bodies being ferried on stretchers from the rubble of homes and hospitals, by rescue workers whose thin bodies and stricken faces suggest they are barely better off than those they’re helping. Social media and journalists make us eyewitnesses to emaciated children too weak to cry. And yet, compared with air raids that crush and bloody instantaneously, a slower disaster, more difficult to capture (especially given our made-for-TikTok attention spans), consists of the hours that many people in war zones spend wasting away from infectious diseases of one sort or another.
Let me count a few of the ways.
In Iraq in 2004, three-month-old Ali tries to cry but he’s too weak to make a sound, since his body has been ravaged by diarrhea. Between 2003 and 2007, half of Iraq’s 18,000 doctors left the country due to the deteriorating security situation (with few intending to return). Health facilities had also been bombed out and destroyed. By then, about two-thirds of the deaths of children under the age of five, like Ali, were due to respiratory infections and diarrhea compounded by malnutrition.
Consider what it would do if someone you loved perished because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time in the storm of war that destroys infrastructure so central to our lives that normally we barely even notice its presence.
In Pakistan in 2017, one of a handful of countries that has yet to eliminate the polio virus, the father of a five-year-old boy is inconsolable when he learns that his son will never walk on his own again. Among displaced people in the Afghan-Pakistani border region where they lived, concerns about counterinsurgency air raids from U.S. and later Pakistani government and opposition forces, security threats toward vaccination teams in conflict-torn parts of that country, and suspicions among parents like that boy’s father that health workers had been sent by the U.S. government to sterilize Pakistani children, all prevented kids from getting the immunizations that they needed.
In Burkina Faso in 2019, three-year-old Abdoulaye dies after contracting malaria while in a shelter for people internally displaced by violence between government forces and Islamic militias. Malnourished and anemic, without direct access to a health clinic, he succumbs to a treatable illness.
In Fayetteville, North Carolina in 2020, as in other military towns across the U.S., rates of sexually transmitted infections like syphilis, herpes simplex, and HIV are among the highest in the country. Bases tend to drive up poverty among civilians by making the surrounding populations dependent on low-wage service work. And stressed-out, war-traumatized American soldiers are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior that spreads disease among the broader population.
In Ukraine in 2023, a soldier treated for severe burns dies of sepsis, despite being given multiple antibiotics. Doctors found klebsiella, a multi-drug-resistant pathogen, in his body. Despite successful efforts by the Ukrainian government to curb antimicrobial resistance in its population prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion, mounting casualties, along with shortages of supplies and personnel, mean that Ukrainian health workers now try to do whatever they can to keep soldiers alive. In the long term, antibiotic-resistant infections traceable to Ukrainian patients are already beginning to appear in places as distant as Japan.
In May 2025 in the Gaza strip, four-month-old Jenan dies from chronic diarrhea after losing half her bodyweight. She needed hypoallergenic milk formula, but aerial bombardments and blockades of basic food and medical supplies have made that once common product scarce. As anthropologist Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins points out, prior to the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, cases of diarrhea in young children there averaged about 2,000 per month. In April of the following year, however, such cases already numbered more than 100,000. Likewise, in the decade before the war, there were no large-scale epidemics in Gaza. In just the first seven months of that conflict, however, overcrowding in makeshift shelters, nutritional deficits, shortages of hygiene products—only 1 in every 3 Gazans has soap!—and contaminated water have led to new outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles, cholera, typhoid, and polio, exacerbated by widespread starvation.
At some level, it couldn’t be simpler. War destroys all too many of the modern amenities that make life possible. Preventable illness and death occur even in industrialized settings that are marked by inequality, lack of information, psychological trauma, or just the chaos of combat that hinders long-term thinking. In poor- and middle-income countries like Yemen, Syria, and Nigeria, infectious diseases were already among the top causes of death, even before the outbreak of significant conflicts. Their incidence, however, grew so much worse in wartime, especially among civilians who didn’t have the same access to doctors and medical hospitals as armed groups.
The body of a single child, wasting away from the lack of the basic fluid that runs in my sink or yours, best captures the way war casualties ripple across time and populations. For every soldier who dies in battle, exponentially more people suffer deaths from malnutrition, disease, or trauma-related violence even after battles end. Preventable infections play a large role in this story.
The War on Children
Children are particularly vulnerable to sickness and death in armed conflicts because of their immature immune systems, greater nutritional needs, tendency to succumb more easily to dehydration, and reliance on families who may not even be around to care for them. A study of more than 15,000 armed-conflict events in 35 African countries found that children aged 10 or younger were far more likely to die if they lived within 100 kilometers of a battle zone than they would have in earlier periods of peacetime. Increases in mortality ranged from 3% to about 27%, varying with how many people also died in nearby battles. Strikingly, many more babies under the age of one died annually in the eight years following a conflict’s end than while the battles were going on—infectious disease being a primary killer.
Take Yemen as an example of how war may affect young children and their families over time. Since the start of that country’s civil war in 2015, cholera, a waterborne illness doctors have known how to prevent since 1954, has ravaged the most vulnerable members of that country’s population, particularly children, due to a lack of appropriate sanitation or reasonable access to healthcare. As of December 2017, more than a million people had contracted the disease, nearly half of them children, and more than 2,000 had died of the illness. Compare that to the more than 10,000 Yemenis estimated to have died in direct combat by that time, and you get an idea of how significantly death by illness counts among the casualties of war.
Nearly a decade later, in fact, there are hundreds of thousands of new cases of that illness in Yemen each year and hundreds of annual deaths, making up more than a third of all cases globally. When Rami discovered that his daughters, aged 10 and 7, had cholera, he managed to scrape together the equivalent of about $15 to travel to a clinic so that the family could get lifesaving fluids and information to prevent further cases. Many families like his, however, can’t afford such treatment, forcing all too many of them to delay care or even experience the unthinkable: losing a child.
Consider what it would do if someone you loved perished because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time in the storm of war that destroys infrastructure so central to our lives that normally we barely even notice its presence. I hope it’s an experience that neither you nor I ever have.
War and Displacement
Still, I think about such things every day, as I bet do many of my colleagues connected to the Costs of War Project. When we first launched that project in 2011, Professors Catherine Lutz, Neta Crawford, and I met with experts in armed conflict to discuss how we would cover the issue of war’s health impacts. Repeatedly, they reminded us of how hard it is to talk about war and health without understanding what it’s like for families to be forced to leave their homes in search of safety.
Unsurprisingly, refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) are uniquely vulnerable to disease and illness. Anyone who has gotten sick while traveling knows that the challenges of getting care are compounded by a lack of knowledge of the community you find yourself in. In the case of today’s more than 122 million war refugees or displaced people, stigma and harassment are frequent travel companions. According to one meta-analysis, more than one-fifth of refugee and IDP women have experienced some form of sexual violence while living in displacement settings. A study of more than 500 immigrants and refugees in Italy found that nearly half experienced physical violence, sexual abuse, harassment, or workplace discrimination.
How did we get to a time when our leaders seem loath to invest in healthcare and don’t even hide their disdain for poor people, a significant number of whom are military personnel and veterans?
The stories that extremist politicians tell about migrants—think of President Donald Trump’s tall tale of supposedly dog- and cat-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio—distract us from the social problems such politicians seem unwilling to deal with like loneliness and poverty. Displaced persons lack political clout and voting power in places that host them and, in actual war zones, fighters rarely respect shelters and camps designated for their survival.
For people who flee their homes, the basic boring stuff is lacking, too. Only 35% of refugees have clean drinking water where they live, while less than a fifth of them have access to toilets. Imagine how that would affect all of the higher-order things you value in your life, including gatherings with people you care about, if you couldn’t even find a decent place to wash your hands or brush your teeth!
Most of all, what stands out to me as both a social worker and a scholar of war is how people forced to leave their communities end up losing connections to health providers they trust. I can’t tell you how many individuals I’ve met in clinical and humanitarian settings who had declined to seek care for Covid-19, pneumonia, severe flu symptoms, and other illnesses because they lacked confidence that professionals in their host communities had their best interests at heart.
My Government’s Assault on Public Health
As Republicans in Congress passed a bill that would deprive millions of Americans of health insurance in the near term, as high-level officials spread disinformation about vaccines for once-eradicated illnesses like measles, and as public health workers and officials face threats of violence, all too many poor Americans are starting to experience the sorts of obstacles to healthcare common in war zones.
Meanwhile, with the Trump administration’s decisions earlier this year to fire at least 2,000 U.S. Agency for International Development workers and freeze foreign aid dollars used (in part) to treat and monitor infectious diseases elsewhere on this planet, the threat that a foreign pandemic might make it to this country has grown considerably.
To quote Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) at a recent town hall with constituents worried about losing healthcare, “We are all going to die.” While that is indeed so, it also matters how. A long life with access to basic services like immunizations and clean water is one of the differences between dying like a human being and dying like one of the wild animals I find in my rural area, infected by bacteria in the water or exhausted from heat exposure.
How, I wonder, did we Americans reach a place where many of us are silent or supportive of a strongman’s $45 million birthday military parade that closed roads to residents and commuters for days? How did we get to a time when our leaders seem loath to invest in healthcare and don’t even hide their disdain for poor people, a significant number of whom are military personnel and veterans?
I’m not sure I know what this country stands for anymore. I don’t know about you, but these days America sometimes feels to me like a treacherous foreign land.
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UNICEF: Over 5,000 Gaza Children Treated for Malnutrition in May Alone
"Every one of these cases is preventable," said one UNICEF official. "The food, water, and nutrition treatments they desperately need are being blocked from reaching them."
Jun 19, 2025
The United Nations Children's Fund said Thursday that childhood malnutrition in the Gaza Strip is "rising at an alarming rate," with more than 5,000 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone as Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege against the Palestinian enclave continued for its 20th month.
UNICEF said that 5,119 children between 6 months and 5 years of age suffering acute malnutrition were admitted for treatment in Gaza last month, nearly 50% more than in April and a 150% increase from February, the month before Israel tightened its already crippling "complete siege" of the coastal strip.
Of the children admitted for treatment in May, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
"In just 150 days, from the start of the year until the end of May, 16,736 children—an average of 112 children a day—have been admitted for treatment for malnutrition in the Gaza Strip," UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
"Every one of these cases is preventable," Beigbeder continued. "The food, water, and nutrition treatments they desperately need are being blocked from reaching them. Man-made decisions that are costing lives. Israel must urgently allow the large-scale delivery of lifesaving aid through all border crossings."
"This is an urgent warning. Concerted action is immediately needed to stop starvation from escalating, malnutrition from rising, disease from spreading, water from running dry, and ultimately, to prevent mounting, wholly preventable child deaths," Beigbeder added. "Humanitarian aid and commercial goods must be allowed to enter, from all available crossings, and be delivered quickly, safely, and with dignity to families in need wherever they are."
Gaza medical officials said late last month that more than 300 Palestinians—including many children and elders—had recently died from malnutrition and lack of medical care due to Israel's siege and bombing.
UNICEF said Thursday that "if the situation does not change immediately... cases of acute malnutrition are likely to continue to rise in coming weeks and could reach the highest level since the beginning of the conflict. This is among a population of children where wasting was non-existent 20 months ago."
The agency continued:
UNICEF has been able to deliver hundreds of pallets of supplies to prevent and treat malnutrition in the last three weeks, but these supplies are wholly inadequate and insufficient compared to the tremendous needs and broader context. The amount of ready-to-use-therapeutic-food (RUTF), a lifesaving essential for children suffering from acute levels of malnutrition, is running critically low.
The conflict has damaged or destroyed essential water, sanitation, and health systems in the Gaza Strip, and has limited the ability to treat severe malnutrition, with just 127 of 236 treatment centers remaining functional, due to displacement orders and incessant bombardments.
In addition to Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza—part of Operation Gideon's Chariots, the Israel Defense Forces campaign to conquer and occupy the strip—IDF troops have been committing near-daily massacres of aid-seeking Palestinians.
Over the past 621 days, Israeli forces have killed at least 55,493 Palestinians and wounded more than 129,300 others in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. At least 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble in the obliterated strip. More than 16,000 children have been killed.
Israel's conduct in the war is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including weaponized starvation.
Human rights defenders warned against losing focus on Gaza amid Israel's widened war on Iran and possible U.S. intervention.
"As Israeli leaders decry alleged war crimes about Iran's retaliatory strikes, they are still starving two million people in Gaza," journalist Abby Martin said on social media Thursday. "Every day, they bait the starving masses and kill them en masse. Don't forget about Gaza."
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Gaza Officials Report Hundreds of Recent Deaths From Starvation and Medicine Shortage
"Two months ago, malnutrition cases did not exceed 50 cases per day," said one nurse in Gaza. "Now, we're seeing about 200 cases per day."
May 22, 2025
Palestinian officials said Thursday that at least 29 children and elders have starved to death over the past two days in Gaza, where more than 300 Palestinians have recently died from malnutrition and lack of medicine due to Israel's siege and bombing, which killed more than 50 people since dawn.
Palestinian Authority Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan's report of at least 29 starvation-related deaths among children and elderly people in the coastal enclave since Tuesday followed Wednesday's announcement by the Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) that a total of 326 Palestinians have died of malnutrition and food and medicine shortages since Israel tightened its "complete siege" on March 2.
Among the victims are 26 dialysis-dependent kidney patients. Officials also reported 300 miscarriages during the same period. Most of Gaza's hospitals have been damaged or destroyed in what critics have called a systematic and genocidal attack on the strip's healthcare system.
"History will not forget U.S. complicity in enabling this horrific humanitarian disaster."
The GMO voiced "grave concern and condemnation of the worsening humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip as a result of the occupation's continued implementation of a systematic starvation policy and preventing the entry of food [and] medical supplies in addition to fuel for 80 consecutive days, in a clear and complete crime amounting to genocide."
"This is accompanied by a complete closure of all crossings, in flagrant violation of all international laws and norms, and in full view of the international community," the agency added.
JUST IN | Palestinian Health Minister: 29 Have Died of Starvation in Gaza in Recent Days Palestinian Health Minister Dr. Majid Abu Ramadan says 29 people—mostly children and elderly—have died of starvation-related causes in Gaza in recent days, warning that thousands more are at risk.
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) May 22, 2025 at 7:02 AM
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor also reported a sharp rise in starvation deaths in Gaza, documenting 26 fatalities including nine children in just 24 hours.
Israel has grudgingly allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza in recent days, under intense international pressure and acknowledgment by even some of its staunchest supporters—including U.S. President Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Jerusalem—that Gazans are starving.
However, experts say the 90 truckloads of aid that entered the strip on Thursday were but a fraction of the 500-600 trucks per day needed to sustain starving Palestinians there.
Furthermore, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS)—which is still reeling from an Israeli massacre of its personnel in March—warned Thursday that allowing so few trucks into Gaza is an "invitation for killing" by desperate mobs.
U.S.-based Project HOPE, one of the few international humanitarian groups still operating medical clinics in Gaza, told The Guardian Thursday that "malnutrition among children, pregnant, and lactating women has surged amid the almost three-month aid blockade, with some clinics reporting up to 42% of pregnant women and 34% of lactating mothers being diagnosed as malnourished."
Ghadeer, a Project HOPE nurse in Gaza, said:
The number of malnutrition cases has skyrocketed. Two months ago, malnutrition cases did not exceed 50 cases per day. Now, we're seeing about 200 cases per day. Many of the children we see haven't eaten real food in weeks—only the nutritional biscuits we distribute. They're losing weight, becoming withdrawn, and getting sick more easily. We are doing everything we can, but we're seeing the consequences of extreme hunger in an entire generation. Without more food and aid coming in, I fear for their future.
Israel's forced starvation of Gazans has drawn mounting criticism, including from Israelis like Yair Golan—a former lawmaker and senior general who said earlier this week that "a sane state does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set goals for itself like the expulsion of a population."
In the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday renewed his call for an end to American armed aid to Israel, while asserting that "history will not forget U.S. complicity in enabling this horrific humanitarian disaster."
The American online educator Rachel Accurso, popularly known as Ms. Rachel, also continued speaking out against the suffering inflicted upon Gaza's children. Holding one of her own children and showing a photo of Suwar Ashur, a 5-month-old Palestinian suffering from acute malnutrition, Accurso implored world leaders to "help this baby" in a video shared widely on social media Wednesday.
"Please look at her," she pleaded. "Please, please look at her. Just please look at her eyes for one minute."
American youtuber Rachel Anne Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel, expresses her deep sadness on the situation of the starving Gaza children, appealing to the world to save them, following UN report that 14,000 children are at risk of death. pic.twitter.com/yO5KoN2PN0
— Kuffiya (@Kuffiyateam) May 21, 2025
"If you just look at her, and if you just think about a baby you love, think about a baby you care so much for, there's no way that we all don't know that you can't kill 15,000 kids, and you can't be about to let 14,000 kids starve," Accurso added, referring to an earlier estimate of the number of children killed since October 2023 and last week's United Nations warning of imminent mass starvation.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday that at least 16,500 Palestinian children have been killed in the strip since October 2023, including 916 infants.
"Whatever is keeping you from standing up for these kids, who don't have food and medical care and who have had amputations without anesthesia, whatever is keeping you from saying it, it's not greater than your humanity," Accurso added.
Meanwhile, Operation Gideon's Chariots—the Israel Defense Forces' campaign to conquer, indefinitely occupy, and ethnically cleanse Gaza, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization—continued Thursday as the IDF issued fresh evacuation orders for people in the heavily bombed Beit Lahia and Jabalia areas in the far north of the strip. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, often more than once.
IDF bombing reportedly killed 52 people since dawn on Thursday, bringing the cumulative death toll from 593 days of bombardment, invasion, and siege to at least 53,762, with more than 122,000 others wounded and over 14,000 more missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israel's annihilation of Gaza is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justicegenocide case led by South Africa. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and weaponized starvation.
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As Israelis Blockade Food to Gaza, 9,000 Children Have Been Admitted for Acute Malnutrition
Medical authorities have documented 57 deaths from malnutrition in Gaza during the current conflict.
May 04, 2025
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said Friday that “Malnutrition is … on the rise. More than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year.”
At least 10 NGO aid kitchens have closed in recent weeks for lack of food, and 25 UN bakeries haven’t been operational for a month. The Israeli military has for two months been committing a war crime in preventing shipments of food from entering Gaza.
Meanwhile, a medical source in Gaza told the Anadolu Agency that on Saturday, a child “died from malnutrition and dehydration at Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City.” Gaza medical authorities have documented 57 deaths from malnutrition in Gaza during the current conflict.
UNICEF says that over 75% of households in Gaza have reported declining access to water. Russell explained that many families with children have to choose between drinking, bathing and cooking.
Because of the lack of clean water, Russell explained, “acute watery diarrhea … now accounts for 1 in every 4 cases of disease recorded in Gaza. Most of these cases are among children under five, for whom it is life-threatening.”
UNICEF’s Russell said, “For two months, children in the Gaza Strip have faced relentless bombardments while being deprived of essential goods, services and lifesaving care. With each passing day of the aid blockade, they face the growing risk of starvation, illness and death – nothing can justify this.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its weekly report on Gaza on Wednesday that “On 25 April, the World Food Programme (WPF) reported that its food stocks in Gaza have been depleted, as the agency delivered its last remaining supplies to kitchens preparing hot meals. WFP additionally highlighted the impact of deteriorating nutrition on vulnerable groups, including children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly, warning that the situation has again reached ‘a breaking point.’”
OCHA added that “Between 18 March and 27 April, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) recorded 259 attacks on residential buildings and 99 on IDP tents. Most of the attacks resulted in fatalities, including of women and children. Among the strikes on IDP tents, 40 reportedly took place in Al Mawasi area, in Khan Younis, where the Israeli army repeatedly directed civilians to seek refuge.”
Over 400 Palestinians seem to be being killed each week by Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the vast majority women and children. Thousands have been wounded in the two months since the government of Benjamin Netanyahu breached the January ceasefire.
OCHA writes, “On 27 April, at about 20:10, 13 Palestinians, including a woman and her six children, were reportedly killed and others injured when a residential building was hit in southern Khan Younis. On 28 April, at about 00:30, 10 Palestinians, including at least three children, were reportedly killed and others, including a seven-year-old girl, were injured when a residential building was hit in Al Fakhoura area, west of Jabalya refugee camp, in North Gaza. On 28 April, at about 00:30, 10 Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured when a residential building was hit in Al Karmah area in northwestern Gaza city.”
Israeli forces have been firing on Palestinian fishing boats, as fishermen desperately attempt to bring in some protein for their families.
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