Newborn, baby and child patients are deprived of necessary treatment due to power crisis and lack of medicines as Israeli forces cutting off electricity, preventing the entry of fuel and various supplies disrupted the functioning of all hospitals in the region, at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on July 04, 2024. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It’s an impossible situation, because even if we prioritize the little fuel that is left to the most urgent departments, we know that they won’t last more than 36 to 48 hours,” said Julie Faucon, MSF medical team leader in Gaza.
The international humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières, also kno wn as Doctors Without Borders or MSF, warned in a Wednesday statement that newborn babies and other patients are at dire risk as southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital runs out of fuel.
The group warned that electricity for the MSF-supported Nasser Hospital, where MSF members are providing emergency, maternity, pediatric, burn, and trauma care, may be cut off for some hospital departments leaving patients without “lifesaving care.” The hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit is currently treating children and newborns who are reliant on mechanical ventilation and incubators. All of these young patients are dependent on electricity from fuel generators, MSF wrote.
Nasser Hospital, as well as two other facilities in the Gaza Strip, Al-Aqsa Hospital and European Gaza Hospital, are nearing the need to close due to lack of fuel, the group reported Wednesday.
“It’s an impossible situation, because even if we prioritize the little fuel that is left to the most urgent departments, we know that they won’t last more than 36 to 48 hours,” said Julie Faucon, MSF medical team leader in Gaza, according to the statement. “While some patients are hanging on by a thread, the lack of sustained electricity is impacting the level of care we can provide to those with burns and trauma.”
Pascale Coissard, MSF emergency coordinator, said that the situation is “a consequence of Israel’s ongoing blockade and continuous criminal looting of lifesaving supplies.”
In mid-July, the United Nations reported that “Israeli authorities continue to tightly control allocations of incoming fuel, thereby limiting humanitarian operations, especially by local partners,” and just last week the body noted that only 16 of the region’s 36 hospitals remained partially in operation.
Pointing to lack of medical supplies, equipment, and personnel, Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization representative for the West Bank and Gaza, told a recent U.N. Security Council meeting that “the health sector is being systematically dismantled.”
Attacks by the Israeli military have left northern Gaza’s three hospitals—the Kamal Adwan Hospital, al-Awda Hospital, and the Indonesian Hospital—either entirely out of service or barely functioning.
Hussam Abu Safia, the head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, was detained by Israeli forces during their raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in late December.
Human rights defenders and the medical community have called for his release, it’s believed that he is being held in an Israeli detention center, though the Israeli officials had given news media and human rights groups conflicting messages about his whereabouts.
Palestinians survey damage after the Israeli military targeted Al-Mawasi, Gaza on January 2, 2025. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Israel continues to bomb Gaza and restrict essential supplies from entering the strip,” said the emergency coordinator of Doctors Without Borders.
Israeli forces early Thursday carried out another attack on a so-called humanitarian “safe zone” in southern Gaza, killing at least 11 people—including three children—as the assault on the Palestinian enclave raged with no end in sight.
Reuters reported that at least 15 people were also wounded in the attack on Al-Mawasi, an overcrowded tent city on Gaza’s southern coast that Israel has repeatedly bombed. In one case late last year, the Israeli military used 2,000-pound bombs supplied by the United States to attack the camp filled with displaced families.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a social media post that it carried out the strike on the designated humanitarian zone, claiming it targeted Hassam Shahwan, whom the IDF described as the head of Hamas Internal Security Forces in southern Gaza.
Video footage shows people attempting to put out fires at the scene with buckets of water:
Thursday’s attack underscored humanitarian aid groups’ warning that nowhere is truly safe for Gazans as Israeli forces carry out deadly airstrikes across the besieged enclave. Al Jazeera reported early Thursday that in addition to the IDF’s attack on Al-Mawasi, “there has been a significant escalation of strikes in central Gaza.”
“Palestinians are mourning those killed in an Israeli strike on civilians in the suburb of central Deir el-Balah city,” the outlet reported. “The bodies—shredded into pieces—have been brought to Al-Aqsa Hospital.”
“In northern Gaza,” Al Jazeera added, “seven civilians were killed in Jabalia following an Israeli attack. In the Shati refugee camp, reports are emerging of three people killed in an attack at the central market.”
Israel’s incessant bombing is fueling a devastating humanitarian crisis worsened by falling temperatures. At least six Palestinian children—including several who were living in makeshift shelters in Al-Mawasi—have died of hypothermia in recent days.
“Last winter—although people were already displaced and the conditions were harsh—there were still some buildings to take shelter in,” Pascale Coissard, emergency coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, said Thursday. “Today, after 14 months of war and destruction of infrastructure, most of the people in Gaza are living in tents that barely isolate the cold wind and rain. Just in the past 12 hours, the rain hasn’t stopped.”
“Even before their lives have started outside the womb, babies are at risk of disease and death,” Coissard added. “Once born, babies face immediate and extreme challenges: displaced in the cold of winter, without adequate access to warmth, shelter, or healthcare, as Israel continues to bomb Gaza and restrict essential supplies from entering the strip, while looting of aid trucks within the enclave is making it difficult for that small amount of aid allowed by Israeli authorities to reach those in need.”
CNN noted earlier this week that “the cold weather has not only claimed the lives of children.”
“On Friday, the health ministry said a nurse was found dead in his tent in Al-Mawasi on Friday due to severe cold,” the outlet reported.
Palestinian children gather to receive bread in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, Gaza on December 19, 2024. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“People in Gaza are struggling to survive apocalyptic conditions, but nowhere is safe, no one is spared, and there is no exit from this shattered enclave,” said the humanitarian group’s secretary-general.
The international humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières published a report Thursday detailing how the Israeli military has systematically destroyed conditions of life in the Gaza Strip over the past 14 months by dismantling the enclave’s healthcare system, forcibly displacing most of the population, choking off humanitarian aid, and reducing much of the territory to rubble.
MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, noted in its 34-page report that its staffers have witnessed and in some cases been the victims of large-scale “violence unleashed by Israeli forces,” which has “caused physical and mental damage on a scale that would overwhelm any functioning health system, let alone one already decimated by a crushing offensive and a 17-year-long blockade.”
While MSF secretary-general Christopher Lockyear stressed that the group doesn’t “have legal authority to establish intentionality” on the part of the Israeli military, “the signs of ethnic cleansing and the ongoing devastation—including mass killings, severe physical and mental health injuries, forced displacement, and impossible conditions of life for Palestinians under siege and bombardment—are undeniable.”
“People in Gaza are struggling to survive apocalyptic conditions, but nowhere is safe, no one is spared, and there is no exit from this shattered enclave,” said Lockyear, who visited Gaza earlier this year. “The recent military offensive in the north is a stark illustration of the brutal war the Israeli forces are waging on Gaza, and we are seeing clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped, and bombed.”
“What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict,” he added, “is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza.”
Even if Israel’s assault ended today, MSF said, “its long-term impacts would be unprecedented, given the scale of the destruction and the extraordinary challenges of providing healthcare across the strip.”
“The cumulative physical toll and mental trauma caused by the extreme violence, loss of family members and homes, repeated forced displacement, and inhumane living conditions will scar generations,” the group added.
Medics care for patients at a clinic set up by Doctors Without Borders in Rafah, Gaza on April 24, 2024. (Photo: Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
MSF’s report, titled Gaza: Life in a Death Trap, finds that Israel’s response to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack “provoked the collapse of Gaza’s already-vulnerable healthcare system” and compromised its ability to provide humanitarian assistance with attacks on aid workers.
Since October 2023, at least eight MSF workers and “many of their family members” have been killed in Gaza, the group said Thursday.
“The pattern of attacks outlined above coupled with its foreseeable consequences and the denial of access to medical care and humanitarian assistance… effectively demonstrate Israeli forces waging a ‘war on the health of Gazans’ that has left the healthcare system in shreds,” the new report states.
The report quotes MSF staffers relaying their horrifying experiences working in Gaza’s barely functional hospitals and clinics without adequate supplies to treat the massive influx of Israeli airstrike victims.
“There are wounded lying everywhere,” Karin Huster, medical referent for MSF in Gaza, said in June. “Bodies are being carried out in plastic bags, the smell of blood is unbearable. Hundreds of people are in the hospital waiting for news of their loved ones injured in the bombardments.”
“Nothing justifies what I saw today,” Huster added. “These children, the three-month-old baby, the 7-year-old, the 12-year-old who died, the 25-year-old man, the 78-year-old woman, all with horrific injuries: Why did they deserve this?”
Human Rights Watch said Thursday that “Israeli authorities have deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population in Gaza by intentionally depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths.”
“In doing so,” HRW added, “Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide.”
Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that “an immediate and sustained cease-fire must be implemented” and the “complete destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza and all things that make up the very fabric of society must stop.”
Additionally, the group urged Israel’s allies to end their unconditional support for the assault on Gaza and demanded an independent investigation into attacks on humanitarian workers.
“Israeli authorities continue to actively block MSF and other humanitarian organizations from providing lifesaving assistance to people trapped under siege and bombardment,” the group said. “States must leverage their influence to alleviate the suffering of people and enable a massive scale-up of humanitarian assistance across the Gaza Strip.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Children in Gaza are becoming increasingly hungry and unhealthy as the destruction of healthcare infrastructure exacerbates the spread of infectious diseases
The health of children in Gaza is deteriorating rapidly. Between June and October 2024, Nasser Medical Complex treated 300 children daily for infectious diseases like diarrhea, respiratory issues, and skin infections. These numbers are compounded by Israeli attacks on hospitals, obstruction of humanitarian aid, and the dire living conditions faced by more than one million forcibly displaced Palestinians preparing for winter in makeshift shelters.
The situation is equally critical regarding hunger and related conditions among children. Since the beginning of the year, nearly 33,000 children have been admitted for acute malnutrition. Health workers have also reported a rise in cases of nutritional edema, a condition that causes swelling due to a lack of protein intake. For over a year, children in the Gaza Strip have struggled to access adequate nutrition because of Israel’s blockades.
Child health experts have repeatedly warned about the long-term consequences of hunger for generations growing up in Palestine. Now, they caution that “there are clear signs of a rapidly worsening nutritional situation across Gaza, with two-thirds of the children admitted for outpatient treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of 2024 recorded in the past five months alone.”
Many child health services have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks, leaving families reliant on sparse healthcare facilities still providing support. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) recently reported that, as a result, many mothers are forced to undertake dangerous journeys on foot to access healthcare for their infants. These journeys, MSF stated, expose both mothers and children to potential attacks and “put them [ill children] at high risk of health complications.”
“Even after receiving treatment, newborns and children return to unsanitary living conditions, which in turn leads to a deterioration of their health conditions and ability to heal properly,” MSF said. “My son doesn’t laugh, doesn’t play, doesn’t drink milk. He sleeps all the time,” a forcibly displaced mother shared with MSF.
Poor hygiene conditions, resulting from Israeli bombardment of water and sanitation infrastructure, are set to worsen further as the rainy season progresses. Thousands of tents have already been destroyed by heavy rains in recent days. Humanitarian agencies expect that heavy rainfall and rising sea tides will make sewage accumulation worse, fueling the spread of disease.
Meanwhile, Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza continue. Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is still being targeted, including by quadcopters, resulting in damage to essential medical equipment and critical injuries to more healthcare personnel. Among the injured is the hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya.
Israeli authorities are still trying to justify the attacks by alleging the presence of Palestinian resistance groups in the hospitals they are attacking, despite not providing any proof. However, UN human rights experts emphasize that even if such claims were true, “Israeli forces are still bound by their obligations under international humanitarian law.”
“The manner in which this Israeli operation [the attack on Kamal Adwan] has been conducted is raising concerns about the likelihood that northern Gaza will be emptied of Palestinians through death and displacement,” the UN Human Rights Office in Palestine stated.
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscriptions to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
dizzy: Israel’s genocides should be regarded as a joint enterprise involving the United States, United Kingdom and Israel.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Al Shifa Hospital after a two-week Israeli siege, April 2024.
Gaza’s hospitals, already overwhelmed, are struggling with an influx of casualties following brutal attacks on refugee camps. Sugary drinks have become the most affordable food as aid delivery obstructions persist
Brutal attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have, yet again, intensified pressure on the few functional hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Health workers at Nasser Medical Complex reported harrowing scenes following attacks on Khan Younis on July 13, where they received over 100 new casualties despite the hospital already operating over capacity.
“At one point, you had people in the hallway moaning in pain,” said Amy Kit-Mei Low, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) project medical referent. “Even though they had [wound] dressings, the dressings were oozing blood. […] the hospital was trying to cope, but it can barely cope with normal cases.”
UNRWA representative Scott Anderson described the scene at the hospital, stressing the lack of beds, disinfectants, and electricity to run ventilation at Nasser. “I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment, and others separated from their parents. I also saw mothers and fathers who were unsure if their children were alive,” Anderson said.
In addition to the relentless IOF attacks, including those targeting healthcare facilities that have killed 2.5% of Gaza’s health workforce since October 7, hospitals are also struggling with aid delivery restrictions imposed by Israel. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, and especially since the beginning of May, the flow of essential goods to hospitals has been drastically reduced. Hospitals are particularly burdened by the ban on certain medications, including anesthetics, strong painkillers, and even diabetes drugs. Recently, a consortium of organizations providing health care in Gaza warned of a shortage of antibiotics safe for pregnant and breastfeeding women due to the blockade.
Despite having hundreds of kilos of aid ready for dispatch, supplies are blocked from reaching hospitals and health centers. The blockade is reinforcing severe food shortages, exacerbating the health crisis. Reports indicate that Israel prioritizes commercial trucks over humanitarian ones at crossings, leaving people with limited and extremely expensive food options. The same consortium of organizations reported that sugary drinks are currently the most affordable food in Gaza.
Famine is spreading rapidly across all regions of Gaza. Nearly 10,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are on the verge of famine, and 7,000 are already living in famine conditions, according to the United Nations. As a result, more babies are being born preterm and underweight.
For older children, mental health persists as a critical issue. The Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) recently estimated that half a million children in Gaza require mental health support. Displaced families report that children are struggling with bedwetting, continuous shaking, violent outbursts, and likely PTSD due to living under constant attack.
GCMHP warns that mental health is also deteriorating among adults, as needs in Gaza far exceed available services. Many people are becoming emotionally numb as a consequence of not being able to receive any mental health support, and are disillusioned by the international community’s failure to halt the genocide perpetrated by Israel. GCMHP teams have encountered people in a state of emotional stagnation, recounting the loss of entire families as if it were a routine event. While scaling up mental health services is crucial for addressing this, GCMHP and other organizations insist that this will not be enough without a ceasefire.
People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
