According to the WHO, acute malnutrition among children under five in northern Gaza has increased from 0.8% to 15.6%
A World Health Organization (WHO) mission has managed to gain access to two hospitals in northern Gaza: Al Shifa, where 50 children “suffer from severe acute malnutrition,” and Kamal Adwan further north. According to Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied territories, ten children have died of starvation and dehydration in the last few days in the latter center's pediatric ward, which is “overcrowded with patients.”
According to Peeperkorn, most of the UN health agency's missions in northern Gaza were rejected in January, while in February “none of them were supported” because the protocol under which prior notification did not indicate the location of aid to fighters did not work.
Malnutrition – which causes irreparable wasting in young children – was never the deadly threat it now poses in Gaza because the enclave is largely self-sufficient in the production of fish and other food, Peeperkorn stressed. “Before hostilities, wasting was rare in the Gaza Strip: only 0.8% of children under five suffered from acute malnutrition,” he explained. “The (current) wasting rate of 15.6% among children under two years of age in northern Gaza indicates a severe and rapid decline. Such a decline in the nutritional status of a population in three months is unprecedented anywhere in the world.”
The WHO official noted with concern that 90% of children under two years of age and 95% of pregnant and breastfeeding women “are affected by severe food poverty – that is, they consumed two or fewer food groups the previous day – and the foods that they eat.” Those you have access to include those with the lowest nutritional value.