Severe malnutrition in Gaza's under-fives triples in a fortnight, says charity

The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says the rates of severe malnutrition among children under five at its Gaza City clinic have tripled in the past two weeks as starvation in the Israeli-besieged strip worsens.

- Malak A Tantesh Gaza William Christou Jerusalem

The global aid community has sounded the alarm as Gaza descends deeper into mass starvation, with daily deaths from starvation reported as Israel allows only a trickle of aid into the territory.

MSF said a quarter of all young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women it screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, with the number of people needing care for malnutrition at its Gaza City location quadrupling since May.

MSF is one of the largest medical providers in Gaza, with more than 1,000 staff in the strip who provide medical services ranging from maternity care to emergency surgeries.

The charity blamed what it called an Israeli "policy of starvation" for the hunger crisis, as global starvation in Gaza, with nine more dying in the past 24 hours, according to health authorities.

The World Food Programme yesterday said nearly a third of people in Gaza had not eaten for days, adding the crisis had reached "new and astonishing levels of desperation".

"Nearly one person in three is not eating for days. Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment," the WFP said in a statement.

Naji al-Qurashali, an obstetrician-gynaecologist in Gaza, said statistics appeared to underestimate the true scale of the problem, estimating that 50% of the hundreds of pregnant women he saw a day were suffering from malnutrition.

"The malnutrition situation is unimaginable. Throughout my entire medical career, I never expected, not even in my wildest dreams, that things would reach this level," said Qurashali.

Miscarriages have increased significantly among his patients as mothers struggle to find food to feed themselves. Those babies that are carried to term are significantly underweight and are increasingly born premature or with disfigurements.