Devi Sridhar writes:

The news from Gaza feels too painful to watch. Videos of immediate violence capture TV and social-media audiences: within seconds, entire hospitals are destroyed and buildings fall to the ground. We are watching death in real time. In my last piece on Gaza, I highlighted the records being set: considering its short duration, it has been the deadliest war in modern history for children, for journalists, for healthcare workers and for UN staff. But there are parts of the on-the-ground situation that are harder to convey in short clips. The thing I hear most when I speak to colleagues in humanitarian organisations is that they are worried about starvation.

They say that, right now, Gaza has the highest proportion of people living with food deprivation anywhere in the world. Before 7 October, when the war started, acute malnutrition was largely nonexistent in Gaza. Since then, among children in northern Gaza it has increased to 15% – that’s one in six children under the age of two – while it is 5% in Rafah in southern Gaza. Unicef has highlighted that 90% of children under five eat fewer than two food groups a day, which is defined as “severe food poverty”, while roughly 90% are affected by an infectious disease, including 70% with diarrhoea. A lack of nutrition and high rates of infectious disease cause a deadly cycle in children: hungry children are more likely to fall sick and have weak immune systems given their fragility, while diarrhoea causes weight and water loss in already thin children.

The word being cautiously used is famine, which could come within weeks. That is, widespread severe shortages of food causing illness and death in a short time period. The UN has repeatedly said that a quarter of the population already faces starvation, while the entire population of 2.3 million lives with food shortages. Famine is usually declared when three conditions are met. First, when 20% of the population suffers extreme food shortages. Gaza is already past this threshold. Second, when acute malnutrition among children exceeds 30%, and third when two deaths for every 10,000 dying per day are due to food shortages and malnutrition. Given the deteriorating humanitarian relief situation and limited food supplies entering the country, famine looks inevitable without urgent international intervention. [Continue reading…]