UN agencies warn of 'explosion' in Gaza child deaths

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
20 Feb 2024 03:10
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UN agencies warn that food and safe water have become "incredibly scarce" in the Gaza Strip.

Displaced Palestinian children gather to receive food at a government school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 19, 2024. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)

The United Nations warned Monday that an alarming lack of food, surging malnutrition, and the rampant spread of disease could spark an explosion in child deaths in Gaza.

Twenty weeks into the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, UN agencies warned that food and safe water had become "incredibly scarce" in the Palestinian territory, adding that virtually all young children had infectious illnesses.

"The Gaza Strip is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths which would compound the already unbearable level of child deaths in Gaza," expressed Ted Chaiban, deputy head of humanitarian action at the UN children's agency UNICEF.

At least 90% of children under five in Gaza are affected by one or more infectious diseases, according to a joint assessment by the UN agencies for children, food, and health.

Seventy percent had had diarrhoea in the two weeks prior to the assessment, marking a 23-fold increase compared to the 2022 baseline.

"Hunger and disease are a deadly combination," World Health Organization emergencies director Mike Ryan said in a statement.

"Hungry, weakened and deeply traumatised children are more likely to get sick, and children who are sick, especially with diarrhoea, cannot absorb nutrients well," he warned.

"It's dangerous, and tragic, and happening before our eyes."

Since the start of the war, Gaza has been plunged into a nutrition crisis, with outside aid severely restricted by the Israeli occupation.

The UN assessment indicated that more than 15% of children under the age of two in northern Gaza -- one in six -- were acutely malnourished, while three percent were suffering from life-threatening severe wasting.

"As the data were collected in January, the situation is likely to be even graver today," the UN agencies pointed out.

In southern Gaza, five percent of children under two were acutely malnourished, according to the assessment.

Before the war, only 0.8 percent of children under five in Gaza were considered acutely malnourished, the UN agencies noted.

"Such a decline in a population’s nutritional status in three months is unprecedented globally," they said.