Like most babies, Sela Majdi Barbakh liked to laugh. But his smile was weak and quickly got up. At 11 months, Sela should weigh around 20 pounds, but only weighs 8. Her thin members were innovatively torlled, and her small hand could barely grasp the finger of the nurse who takes care of her.
“She is continuously losing weight,” said her mother, Najah Hachem Barbakh, 36, to the NBC News team on the ground in Gaza. Barbakh said that she knew four other children who died in the same room in the pediatric district of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. She feared that Sela would not be the next one.
Sela is one of the thousands of children in the Gaza Strip suffering from acute malnutrition while the Israeli authorities continue to restrict the entrance to the aid, including the baby formula. Doctors, aid groups and the Palestinians say that the long -standing hunger crisis has reached a tilting point, with the death of malnutrition.
In the past 24 hours, Gaza hospitals have recorded nine deaths by malnutrition, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Friday in a statement, bearing the total number of malnutrition deaths since the start of the war at 122, including 83 children.
Sela is malnourished and has lost all its muscle and fat, said Dr. Ahmad al-Fara, head of the pediatric department of the hospital, adding that it suffered from vitamin D and iron deficiencies.
“It is one of the extreme examples of malnutrition,” he said. “It is only the skin on the bone.”
Barbakh said she brought Sela to the hospital 10 days ago after her family runs out of food and water.
“I was breastfeeding it naturally at first, but in the end, I stopped producing milk,” she said, Because “I had neither food nor water to feed me.”
She went to the formula, “but now it is also unavailable.”
On Wednesday, the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, its sexual and reproductive health agency, said the humanitarian situation in Gaza led to “catastrophic birth results for pregnant women and newborns, threatening the survival of an entire generation”.
Citing new data from the Ministry of Health of Gaza, the UNFPA noted that the number of babies born in Gaza had decreased sharply in the first six months of the year, lowering 41% – against 29,000 births during the same period in 2022 to 17,000.
Many newborns are in crisis. At least 20 babies died within 24 hours of birth, said the UNFPA, while 33% were born prematurely, underweight or required admission to neonatal intensive care.
Another UN report published Thursday said that 9% of Gaza children are seriously ill -fed.
“We are now witnessing a deadly increase in deaths related to malnutrition,” said OMS Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday during a press briefing, adding that since July 17, serious acute malnutrition centers are full “,” without sufficient supply for emergency food. “”
Barbakh, who was moved from his home to Khan Younis and now lives in a cramped tent with six other family members, said food in Gaza has become extremely rare, and the little that the little is available on the markets is exorbitant.
“Only one box of formula milk costs 170 shekels ($ 51), and I can’t afford it for my daughter,” she said.
Another of the babies suffering from malnutrition of the Nasser hospital was 5 months Ramaa, wearing a pink flower dress which crumpled around its slight setting.
She was born weighing 6 pounds, and still does it. “His weight remains the same; he has not increased, not even by a gram,” said his mother, Naglaa Waleed Aia, 33, to the NBC press team in Gaza.
Until about two months ago, Waleed Abu Aia said Ramaa “was breastfeeding naturally, but I suffer from malnutrition due to a lack of food and water, so the child has become malnourished.”
By walking in the neighborhood, Elidalis Burgos, an American intensive care nurse volunteering at Nasser Hospital, visited several babies and children. A boy in an orange shirt lay in a bed bed, his members and a bandaged face after being injured in a strike that killed his family. A month later, the angles of his bones were visible under his thin skin.
“He suffers from many injuries and severe malnutrition,” said Burgos, “because the blockade has not allowed any nutrition for anyone. Without that, it will be very difficult for a good prognosis.”
Israel says that food aid enters Gaza but is not distributed by aid groups, but these groups say that it is not enough.
Burgos said that she had witnessed the baby’s formula to launch Israeli military provided by international workers, doctors and nurses from her non -governmental medical agency Glia.
“Even as a humanitarian workers, the little we are trying to bring, he is thrown,” she said, adding: “We are not allowed to bring food or the formula for babies or children here.”
The Israeli defense forces did not immediately respond to the request for comments from NBC News on the latest UN or the serious shortage of baby formulas in Gaza. He did not answer when he asked him questions about Burgos’ account that the soldiers had thrown the baby formula brought by humanitarian workers.
He maintains that he made it possible to help in Gaza, blaming the UN and Hamas so as not to ensure his delivery. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric denied this statement on Thursday, blaming Israel for non-compliance with aid.
Najah Hachem Barbakh, Sela’s mother, said she hadn’t eaten anything all day. But she said, deadly hunger was spread to take the most vulnerable first. “I keep saying to myself,” I can endure, but my children cannot. »»
