UNITEDNATIONS: Almost 3,000 malnourished children are at risk of dying before their families’ eyes in Gaza, where the eight-month-long war continues, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as spokesperson James Elder told UN News about the situation on the ground in the besieged and bombarded enclave.
Speaking from Gaza, Mr. Elder described a dire landscape, with a focus on child malnutrition and the devastating impact of the ongoing conflict amid growing concerns of famine.
The destruction of health facilities, including specialised centres that are critical for staving off malnutrition, has severely hampered efforts to address severe hunger among children against a backdrop of constant bombings and attacks alongside the “lethal” lack of access to basic necessities that have already left children physically and psychologically scarred.
The UNICEF spokesperson emphasised the urgent need for a ceasefire to address the humanitarian crisis, get the hostages home and allow for the delivery of aid, education and medical care.
He said that if we focus on the nutritional situation, it was an immense effort from colleagues and partners over the last months to create stabilisation centres to address malnutrition. When that massive offensive came into Rafah [last month], forcing another million people who surely had already moved three, four or five times, we lost those stabilisation centres.
“The thousands of children who were being given the nutrition they needed suddenly disappeared again into the community. That’s perilous in a place where we know there’s a lethal lack of water and a dangerous, dangerous lack of sanitation,” he said.
James Elder said that we are now at a handful that are partially functioning from a previous total of 36 hospitals and healthcare centres in Gaza. Al-Aqsa Hospital [in central Gaza] took the brunt of those people after the [military] operation on Saturday. It was already overflowing because they’re in a state of war.
