Starving children fill hospital wards as famine looms in Gaza

Six-year-old Fadi Al Zant is acutely malnourished, his ribs protruding under leathery skin, his eyes sunken as he lays in bed at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, where famine is bearing down.
Fadi’s spindly legs can no longer support him enough to walk. Photographs of Fadi from before the war show a smiling, healthy-looking child, standing in blue denims next to his taller twin with his hair brushed. A short video clip shows him dancing at a wedding with a little girl.
Fadi suffers from cystic fibrosis. Before the conflict, he was taking medicine that his family can no longer find and eating a carefully balanced variety of food no longer available in the Palestinian enclave, according to his mother Shimaa Al Zant.
More than five months into Israel’s ground and air campaign, there are widespread shortages of food, medicines and clean water in Gaza, doctors and aid agencies say.
The Kamal Adwan Hospital, caring for Fadi, had also treated most of the 27 children the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says have died of malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks.
Others died in Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital, also in the north, the ministry said, and in the southernmost city of Rafah, where the UN relief agency says over 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge from Israel’s offensive.
Without urgent action, famine will hit between now and May in northern Gaza, where 300,000 people are trapped by fighting, the world’s hunger watchdog, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said in a review on Monday.
The review’s most likely scenario said “extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality” were imminent for more than two thirds of the people in the north. The IPC is made up of UN agencies and global aid groups.
Following the IPC review, Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy posted on X that the number of food trucks had increased in March and that Israel was taking measures to bolster “delivery efforts” to the north.
“It’s a bad assessment, based on an out of date picture,” he said of the review.
USAID chief Samantha Power said the IPC assessment marked “a horrific milestone” and called on Israel to open more land routes.
UN aid agencies have said “overwhelming obstacles” to moving aid to the north of Gaza will only be overcome with a ceasefire and the opening of border crossings closed by Israel after Oct.7.
DISPLACED
In better times, Fadi’s favourite food was chicken shawarma, a Levantine grill dish, his mother said, and he ate a lot of fruit and drank a lot of milk.
When the war began, she said, the family fled their home in Al Nasr district of Gaza City, which suffered widespread damage from bombardment. They were displaced four times before arriving in Beit Lahia, she added.
Fadi’s condition began to deteriorate about two months ago and he was admitted to Kamal Adwan Hospital, Zant said. Creon — the medicine that people with cystic fibrosis need to supplement pancreatic enzymes that help digest food — was not available. Sometimes, Fadi had diarrhoea 10 times in one night.
Before the war, the child weighed 30kg (66 lb). Now he weighs just 12kg (26 lb), his mother said.
“He used to eat well. His treatment was available. His face was full. He was a child that did not seem ill. He went to kindergarten with his brother,” she said.
COGAT did not respond to a question about the availability of Creon, but said Israel had “not refused a single shipment of medical supplies.”
The Gaza health ministry says lack of medication contributed to the deterioration of the conditions of the children who died.
As well as for children like Fadi who have pre-exisiting medical conditions, risks are rapidly rising for many others in Gaza, U.N. agencies say.