The United Nations: “amazing” rates of acute malnutrition among the children of Gaza

In a post on social media today, Thursday, UNRWA Commissioner -General Philip Lazarini quoted one of his field colleagues in the sector as saying: “The residents of Gaza are neither dead nor neighborhoods, but mobile bodies.”

Mr. Lazarini said that when malnutrition rises in children, adaptation mechanisms fail, food and care are not accessed, “The famine begins in a silent outbreak.”

He said: “Most of the children receive our teams suffer from wasting and weakness, and they are very at risk of death if they do not get the treatment they need urgently. Reports have reported that more than a hundred people have died, the vast majority of them are children.”

UN -working partners also found nutrition that nearly five thousand out of 56,000 children under the age of five had undergone a malnutrition in the first two weeks of July in the governorates of Khan Yunis, Deir Al -Balah and Gaza, suffering from severe malnutrition.

The deputy spokesman for the United Nations, Farhan Haq, indicated that this represents an amazing percentage of 9%, which is an increase of 6% in June and 2.4% in February.

Farhan Haq added that the number of dead births in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reached 220 cases during the period between January to June this year.

Fays due to hunger

UNRWA Commissioner -General Philip Lazarini said that the worsening crisis in Gaza affects everyone, including those who are trying to save lives in the war -torn sector. He said that UNRWA’s healthy lines live on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if they eat it at all.

They added “They are increasingly fainted by hunger while working.” He said: “When the careers cannot find enough food, the entire human system is collapsing.”

Mr. Lazarini said that parents suffer from extreme hunger that they cannot take care of their children, and those who reach UNRWA clinics. “They do not have energy, food or means to follow medical advice.”

He added: “Families are no longer able to adapt, they collapse, and are unable to survive. Their presence is threatened.”

The Commissioner -General called for allowing humanitarian workers to provide assistance in an unrestricted and without interruption to Gaza and its people, and he recalled that UNRWA has the equivalent of six thousand trucks loaded with foodstuffs and medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt is awaiting allowing them to enter the sector.

Humanitarian distillation

On the ground, the United Nations teams managed to receive food aid from the Kerem Abu Salem and Zikim crossings yesterday, which were mainly consisting of flour. However, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed that the few assistance that managed to reach warehouses, distribution points and other humanitarian facilities inside Gaza in the recent period “Not enough to reduce famine, or to support saving lives, especially as the Israeli army continues to issue new displacement orders.”

Yesterday, out of 16 attempts to coordinate humanitarian movements, only eight attempts were facilitated. At a press conference held in New York, Mr. Haq said that two other moves were approved, but they faced field obstacles, and three categorically rejected, including the retrieval of medical supplies, and the organizers were forced to cancel the remaining three movements.

The United Nations and its partners are unable to introduce adequate aid to Gaza due to a number of interconnected factors, including bureaucratic, logistical, administrative obstacles and other operational obstacles imposed by the Israeli authorities, as well as continuous hostilities and arrival restrictions inside Gaza, criminal looting and shooting incidents that have killed and injured persons gathered to empty relief supplies on convoys.

The deputy spokesman for the United Nations stated that these factors are combined “People and workers in the humanitarian field offered a serious danger, and forced relief agencies on many occasions to stop collecting shipments from the crossings controlled by the Israeli authorities.”

With the increasing restriction of Gaza population to an area not exceeding 12% of the area of the Strip, the Israeli authorities prevented the entry of basic materials such as tents or any other shelters for more than 20 weeks. Mr. Haq said: “Our colleagues are in the field, and they themselves are affected, displaced, and suffer from hunger, insisting on staying and providing life -saving aid. They, like the rest of the United Nations, continue to call for a ceasefire and end the destruction.”