Gaza mother makes plea to save 5-year old son from malnutrition

UK doctors say the death toll from malnutrition is likely to exceed the numbers directly killed by the Israeli military.

Mohammed Sondos is suffering from malnutrition and rare metabolic disorder in northern Gaza. Photo: Haneen Saleem / MAP

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A Palestinian mother in Gaza has made an urgent plea to save her son’s life, after months of malnutrition have left him emaciated and suffering seizures.

Five-year old Mohammed from northern Gaza suffers from a rare metabolic disorder and has been unable to eat the proper foods or take the medicines required to manage his condition.

This caused him to lose over a quarter of his body weight – dropping from 16kg to 11kg.

Mohammed's mother, Sondos Hamada, takes him to the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital and Sheikh Radwan clinic every day, hoping to find ways to help him.

“After we were displaced, Mohammed's health took a turn for the worse, lacking access to the necessary medications or adequate food,” she said in a statement shared by the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.

“I’m witnessing my son’s life turn into a daily nightmare,” she said.

In pictures shown to The National, Mohammed is lying down on a clinic bed, his bony legs and arms swollen at the joints. His cheekbones are hollow and his face gaunt – yet he smiles as his mother holds him up to the nurse.

At least 30 children have died of malnutrition in Gaza as of June, including a 2-month-old baby and children aged 10 and 13, since the war began.

At the time, more than a fifth of Palestinians in Gaza were facing “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity, including “extreme lack of food, starvation and exhaustion of coping capacities”, and almost all [96 per cent] facing crisis levels of food shortages, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, is a tool for improving food security analysis and decision-making.

UK doctors who travelled on emergency missions to Gaza fear that the death toll from malnutrition is likely to exceed the numbers directly killed by the Israeli military.

“Even if there was a ceasefire today, patients will die as a result of this malnourishment in a year's time,” Dr Yassar Qureshi, a surgeon at University College London Hospital told The National.

Dr Qureshi was in Gaza in May. In a letter to The Lancet medical journal on Thursday, he warned that “starvation and denial of basic medical care were being used as a weapon of war”.

Mohammed Sondos, aged 5, suffering from malnutrition in northern gaza. Photo: Haneen Saleem / MAP

Before the war, Mohammed was undergoing physical therapy and taking the right medicines, which helped him maintain a healthy weight. “He was doing better, gaining weight, and was more active,” his mother recalled.

Now, he is unable to walk or sit up, and has started to get seizures, according to a statement from MAP.

When the war started in October and the family were displaced multiple times, they often ran out of food. Mohammed’s special diet, which required ground food prepared with electricity and boiled water, was difficult to maintain.

Doctors say that his current diet of canned food is not suitable for someone with his condition. He has also been unable to access medicines like Dantrelax and Thryzium, which are essential for managing his condition.

But no matter how much she searches, Ms Hamada is unable to find the right foods for her son. “Even the semolina and dates that I used to rely on are no longer available. My son has become emaciated, and I fear losing him at any moment,” she said.

“Imagine, as a mother, I see my son deteriorating before my eyes, and I can’t do anything about it,” she said.

“I just want to see my son healthy again. I want to provide him with the care he needs and deserves. No mother should have to watch their child suffer like this,” she said.

Yassar Qureshi, left, with local Gaza surgeon Ayman Saad. Photo: Yassar Qureshi

Uncounted deaths from malnutrition

More than 50,000 children are estimated to require treatment for acute malnutrition in Gaza, with 340,000 children under 5 requiring feeding supplements, almost all (96 per cent) of the Gaza strip faces “high levels of acute food insecurity”.

Aid workers in Gaza say malnutrition in the strip is preventable. “The steep rise in malnutrition that we are seeing in Gaza is dangerous and entirely preventable,” said Haitham Al Saqqa, a nutrition officer for MAP.

“Children and women need continuous access to healthy foods, clean water, and health and nutrition services. For that to happen, we need decisive improvements on security and humanitarian access, and additional entry points for aid to enter Gaza.”

Dr Yassar Qureshi operating at the al Aqsa Martyr's Hospital in Gaza in May. Photo: Yassar Qureshi

Dr Qureshi noticed the impact of food shortages immediately when he got to al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where he was stationed in May. Patients, he said, were “visibly skinny and medical staff “looked like skeletons”. “These are people who used to be living in nice homes with a garden, and are now in a tent city,” he said.

The real impact of this became apparent after surgery: malnourished patients could not heal from their wounds because of the missing nutrients. “All the repairs you would do, would not heal. You would need to operate again a few days later,” he said.

Patients needing abdominal surgery would see their wounds re-open in a few days. For most, their only hope for recovery would be medical transfer out of Gaza. “If they manage to survive, it will be the most miserable existence,” he said.

“Sometimes I wished they wouldn't survive,” he said, of some of the children he treated with serious injuries to abdomen or lost limbs, whom he said would never live a normal life again.

Patients who die of their wounds are counted as trauma deaths, meaning the real toll from malnutrition is not being recorded.

Surgery patients are normally given artificial nutrients and fluids to help them recover after an operation, and this practice is well “established” across the world, Dr Qureshi said.

But the hospital had run out of these – some were even given dirty water to drink after surgery.

A woman makes bread inside the Asdaa Central Prison facility, which has been converted into a shelter for internally displaced people, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. EPA

Multiple requests to have more supplies sent over with aid lorries were rejected, he said, by Israeli authorities. “It was a purposeful blockade on any form of nutrition,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court, over accusation they used “the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

Israeli officials and organisations have repeatedly denied that Israel is obstructing the entry of aid into Gaza, instead blaming Hamas, whom they say is stealing the aid.

The crisis has seen calls for an immediate ceasefire from humanitarian aid agencies, and for the entry of more aid into Gaza.