A victim of hunger and aid blockade, little Shamm is slowly recovering

An emaciated toddler with a rare disease evacuated from the conflict in Gaza is recovering from malnutrition in an Italian hospital. Andrea Rosa and Colleen Barry of the Associated Press report

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SINCE arriving emaciated in Italy from Gaza, little Shamm Qudeih has celebrated her second birthday and gained weight on a new diet that includes a special porridge - progress welcomed by doctors treating her for severe malnutrition worsened by a genetic metabolic disease.

Just weeks ago the toddler was all skin and bones as she clung to her mother in a hospital in southern Gaza, after months of being unable to get the food and treatment she needed because of an Israeli blockade aimed at pressuring the Hamas militant group to release hostages.

Then she was evacuated to Italy for medical treatment, along with six other Palestinian children.

A striking photo of Shamm wincing in her mother's arms, with her hair matted and ribs protruding from her chest, was taken by Associated Press freelance journalist Mariam Dagga just days before the child left Gaza on August 13.

It was one of Ms Dagga's last images. She was among 22 people killed in an August 25 Israeli strike on the same hospital in southern Gaza.

More than half a million people in Gaza, a quarter of the population, are experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger because of the blockade and ongoing military operations, the world’s leading authority on hunger crises said last month. Gaza City, in the north, is experiencing famine, it said.

Last week, Shamm was sitting up, alert in a hospital crib in Naples, her fine blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail. She wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “cute.”

Her wide eyes gleamed as her older sister and mother called her name from across the room, and she broke into a smile.

Weighing around 4kg (9lb) when she arrived in Italy, Shamm was “in a serious and challenging clinical state,” said Dr Daniele de Brasi, a paediatric genetic disease specialist who is treating her at Santobono Pausilipon Children’s Hospital in Naples.