LONDON: For any neonatal intensive care physician, the sight of three or more premature babies sharing a single incubator is cause enough for alarm.<\/p>\n
There is, without doubt, a shortage of incubators, and many other things, in Gaza\u2019s hospitals.<\/p>\n
But behind the heartbreaking photographs emerging this week from the front line of Gaza\u2019s battered healthcare system\u2019s fight to save the most innocent victims of Israel\u2019s war since October 2023 lies a broader crisis, UNICEF\u2019s Toby Fricker said.<\/p>\n
Fricker, the East Jerusalem-based head of advocacy and communications for UNICEF Palestine, spent last week in Gaza, visiting many of the organization\u2019s children\u2019s programs, in Beit Lahia, Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis, including the neonatal intensive care unit at Nasser hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work of the unit, the incredible work of the doctors and nurses and everyone there is so impressive,\u201d he told Arab News.<\/p>\n
\u201cThankfully, we\u2019ve been able to provide at least a number of the incubators and ventilators to support the facility, which is full to the brink and working round the clock.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes babies are sharing an incubator, at least the ones who are not in critical condition, and then they have another room where they\u2019re able to provide feeding for the babies that have come out of intensive care and are more stable and improving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Incubators and other vital medical equipment, including monitors and ventilators, rely on electricity, which in Gaza\u2019s current situation has created a dependency on generators \u2014 and the fuel that powers them.<\/p>\n On Monday reports began to circulate that the World Health Organization had announced that because of a shortfall in funding it was going to have to stop supplying diesel to hospitals in Gaza.<\/p>\n As a WHO response to Arab News yesterday made clear, there had been a threat to supplies.\u00a0<\/p>\n But for now, said Christian Lindmeier, a spokesman for the organization, \u201cin coordination with the UN, WHO has now been able to ensure fuel provision for essential health services can continue.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWHO will continue supporting efforts by other UN agencies to sustain fuel provision, enabling WHO to concentrate on delivering essential medical supplies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For now, at least,\u00a0the incubators\u00a0will continue to function. But in addition to the shortage of these pieces of equipment that can spell the difference between life and death for premature babies, Fricker said that it was the unusually large number of babies that needed them that was ringing alarm bells among health professionals working in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cHospitals in Gaza are seeing a lot more premature births than before (the war) and a lot of those babies are born with congenital issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hospitals are doing amazing work for the newborns and premature infants and they are saving a lot of very young lives.<\/p>\n \u201cBut environmentally, the impact on pregnant women in Gaza is massive, in terms of the struggle to get access to safe water, good sanitation, proper nutrition and all the conditions you need to have a healthy pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n Fricker used to work with UNICEF in Ukraine, \u201cand we saw there a rise in premature births because of more restricted access to essential services and the added stress on pregnant women.\u201d<\/p>\n It is still too early for academic studies to reveal the extent of the impact of the conflict on the health of pregnant women and their babies but some anecdotal horror stories have emerged.\u00a0<\/p>\n In May last year distressing photographs were released by the Palestine Information Center of a child born at Al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza without a brain and with severe deformities.<\/p>\n In a social media post at the time Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, director general of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, described the case of the 2-day-old child as just one of an increasing number of \u201cshocking cases of deformities.\u201d<\/p>\n He called for an international investigation into whether there was any link between congenital defects and the potential toxicity of the munitions used by the Israelis.<\/p>\n Quoting official sources, the Palestine Information Center reported that between June and August 2024 172 children had been born at Nasser Hospital \u201cwith congenital deformities or disorders,\u201d of whom 20 percent died.<\/p>\n According to statistics from the United Nations Population Fund, up to one in five of Gaza\u2019s 55,000 pregnant women in 2025 suffered from malnutrition, leading in many cases to high-risk pregnancies.<\/p>\n In February and March 2025 at least 20 percent of newborns in Gaza were either born premature, with complications or deformities, or malnourished.<\/p>\n Like many of Gaza\u2019s hospitals \u2014 the 18 that are still at least partially operational,\u00a0that is, compared with the 36 that existed before the war \u2014 facilities at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis have been damaged and staff have had to move units, including neonatal intensive care, into whatever spaces can still be used.<\/p>\n Fricker said that even when premature children survived their poor start in life and graduated from the critical care units, their fight for a normal, healthy life was far from over.<\/p>\n \u201cHere in the Gaza Strip, it\u2019s incredibly difficult,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe children can come through the units, they\u2019re fed properly and then they\u2019re released. But for the parents there is still the challenge of having to bring up a very young child, who\u2019s probably underweight and needs a lot of support, in the conditions that people are living in, in tents in very crowded conditions and with limited access to safe water.\u201d<\/p>\n At the moment, those tents \u201care boiling hot,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then of course we have the concern over the winter rains coming soon and the impact that will have on living conditions across the Gaza Strip.\u201d<\/p>\n UNICEF is also keenly aware of the potential for a long-term mental health crisis among children who have grown up in such traumatic circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cTrauma pervades the\u00a0Gaza Strip,\u201d Fricker said. \u201cPretty much every child\u00a0has been impacted by some form of trauma\u00a0and really needs some form of support\u00a0\u2014 this is another massive issue.<\/p>\n \u201cUNICEF works with\u00a0social workers who provide support to\u00a0children who are injured, and\u00a0others as well, and we\u00a0are\u00a0currently working on getting children back into learning\u00a0at the start of the school year in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not only about a child\u2019s right\u00a0to education, it\u2019s also about the\u00a0sort of routine,\u00a0normalcy\u00a0and\u00a0stability that\u00a0a\u00a0school can provide.\u201d<\/p>\n Many schools have been destroyed but with UNICEF\u2019s support replacements are springing up in tents, often in the yards of schools that have been damaged.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is giving\u00a0children some structured learning and some structured fun activities, the chance\u00a0to be with their friends, to be with teachers, which really does support their mental well-being as well,\u201d\u00a0Fricker said.<\/p>\n \u201cAt\u00a0the same time we are able to work\u00a0with teachers to be able to identify children who might need more specialized support and can refer them to other organizations or to social workers who are working in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s\u00a0really a massively important part of our work with partners on the ground,\u00a0providing some sort of an everyday childhood experience and trying to\u00a0support children who have lived through so much that they\u00a0shouldn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year a paper published in the WHO\u2019s Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal focused on a very particular aspect of the suffering of Gaza\u2019s children, on whom \u201cthe impact \u2026 has been catastrophic\u201d \u2014 those who have \u201cbeen caught in the crossfire and have become victims of traumatic injuries, resulting in limb amputations.\u201d<\/p>\n The authors, from the pediatrics outpatient department at Hamad Medical Corp. in Doha, said that these young survivors \u201cnow face profound physical, emotional and psychological challenges in a community already burdened by the impact of conflicts.\u201d<\/p>\n The shocking statistic revealed by the paper, and authenticated by figures from UNICEF, is that in the first 10 weeks of the war \u201cmore than 10 children in Gaza lost one or both legs each day, and over 1,000 have lost limbs since the current conflict began in October 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n Given the lack of supplies and equipment, there is only so much Gaza\u2019s hospitals can do for many patients who require specialist treatment that is currently only available abroad.<\/p>\n According to Gaza\u2019s health ministry, in July more than 15,000 patients were awaiting treatment abroad for conditions ranging from cancer to war wounds.<\/p>\n The WHO said at the time that in the eight months since the ceasefire fewer than 2,000 people had been able to leave Gaza for treatment.\u00a0 Waiting has proved fatal for an estimated 300 or more patients who died before they could travel for help.<\/p>\n Some stories have been particularly heartbreaking.<\/p>\n In December 2023 an Israeli tank shell hit a children\u2019s ward at\u00a0Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing Dounia, a 12-year-old girl who had lost a leg in an earlier airstrike that had killed her mother, father, brother and sister. Dounia had been hoping to receive a prosthetic leg.<\/p>\n Even if the hostilities ended tomorrow, health experts believe it will take many years for Gaza\u2019s healthcare system to fully recover.<\/p>\n Maurizio Bonati,\u00a0a WHO consultant and\u00a0former head of the Laboratory for Maternal and Child Health at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, posed a telling question in a paper published in March in the journal BMJ Paediatrics: \u201cWhat will happen to the surviving children once hostilities are suspended?\u201d<\/p>\n For an answer he looked at the healthcare outcomes of three previous conflicts \u2014 in Iraq, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n He said that what he found was that \u201cafter the acute phase of an armed conflict it takes approximately 10 years to restore, maintain and resume the trends in improvement in the under-5 mortality rate, in rates of vaccination coverage, wasted children and completion of primary education to pre-conflict levels.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the publication in May of a report by The Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health\u2013Lancet Commission, which argued that the current global humanitarian system was \u201cno longer fit for purpose,\u201d three employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East responded with a letter to The Lancet.<\/p>\n Gaza, they wrote, was \u201cthe clearest example\u201d of the challenge for the humanitarian system.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe humanitarian catastrophe has gone beyond anything most of us could have imagined. For those who knew Gaza before the war began on Oct. 7, 2023 the scale of destruction and human suffering would have been inconceivable. It is difficult to argue that humanitarian action has achieved the outcomes that the people of Gaza deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n But the failure to deliver those outcomes, they said, \u201cshould not be interpreted as a failure of humanitarian workers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have witnessed in Gaza the commitment, dedication, innovation and courage of health workers. The problem lies beyond the humanitarian workforce.<\/p>\n \u201cThe humanitarian system has been constrained, with devastating human consequences. As of June, 2026, 392 of our colleagues at UNRWA had been killed.\u201d<\/p>\n The destruction of Gaza\u2019s healthcare system is the subject of a special issue this month of the journal Bioethics. One of the articles argues that \u201cIsrael\u2019s destruction \u2026 of Palestinian health systems \u2026 should be understood as an instance of \u2018necropolitics,\u2019\u201d in which \u201cpower is exercised through the systematic exposure of a population to death.\u201d<\/p>\n Access to health systems, the authors said, \u201cis a core determinant of a person\u2019s health and well-being and control of health systems is key to national sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThose seeking to control, oppress or eliminate \u2018threatening\u2019 or \u2018undesirable\u2019 populations can achieve this end by attacking health infrastructure and restricting access to healthcare services.<\/p>\n \u201cBy reducing Palestinians to death-like living conditions through the destruction … of health infrastructure, Israel optimizes its control over the remaining population of Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel says its operations at Gaza\u2019s hospitals target Hamas fighters and military infrastructure, accusing the group of using medical facilities for military purposes and civilians as human shields. Hamas denies using hospitals for military purposes.<\/p>\n According to the most recent Humanitarian Situation Report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, published on Sept. 4, \u201cchildren continue to be killed by airstrikes and other attacks affecting populated areas in the Gaza Strip\u201d and \u201cmost of Gaza\u2019s 2.1 million are approaching the rainy season in overcrowded displacement sites, at risk of flooding and disease, while efforts to help them prepare are constrained by funding shortfalls and access restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n Between Aug. 26 and Sept. 2, 31 Palestinians, including seven children, were reported killed and 86 injured.<\/p>\n Fricker said that in Gaza there was now an urgent need for funding from the international community.<\/p>\n \u201cUNICEF is grateful for the support received to improve children\u2019s lives across the Gaza Strip. But the\u00a0needs are vast and UNICEF urges partners to provide flexible and timely funding to sustain the response to better protect children, to provide the essential water, sanitation and health services they need and to help children get back into learning and to live their childhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Israel](\"https:\/\/assets.maestronewsroom.com\/media\/30f6532d-717b-4366-9158-9c455299fcd9\/1789385337985-90387d468925e843.JPG\")
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