Children's lives threatened by growing malnutrition in the Gaza Strip

A sharp increase in malnutrition among children and pregnant and lactating women in the Gaza Strip poses a serious threat to their health, according to a comprehensive new analysis published by the Global Nutrition Cluster.

As the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip enters the 20^th weekly food and safe water have become incredibly scarce, and disease is rampant, compromising the nutrition and immunity of women and children and resulting in a wave of acute malnutrition.

Report “Food Vulnerability and Situation Analysis – Gaza” – believes that the situation is particularly extreme in the northern Gaza Strip, which has been almost completely cut off from aid for weeks. Nutrition checks carried out in shelters and health centers in the north showed that 15.6 percent – ​​or 1 in 6 children under the age of 2 – were acutely malnourished. Of these, nearly 3 percent suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts young children at the highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive immediate treatment. As the data was collected in January, the situation will probably be even more difficult today.

Similar checks in the southern Gaza Strip, in Rafah, where aid was more readily available, found that 5 percent of children under the age of 2 were acutely malnourished. This is clear evidence that humanitarian access is needed and can help prevent the worst outcomes. It also reinforces calls for agencies to protect Rafah from the threat of intensified military operations.

“The Gaza Strip is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child mortality, which would worsen the already intolerable level of child mortality in Gaza,” said UNICEF's Deputy Executive Director for Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations, Ted Chaiban. “We have been warning for weeks that the Gaza Strip is on the verge of a food crisis. If the conflict does not end now, children's nutrition will continue to decline, leading to preventable deaths or health problems that will affect Gazan children for the rest of their lives and have potential intergenerational consequences.”

Before the last months of hostilities, weight loss in the Gaza Strip was rare with only 0.8 percent of children under the age of 5 being acutely malnourished. The 15.6 percent wasting rate among children under the age of 2 in northern Gaza indicates a serious and rapid decline. Such a drop in the nutritional status of the population in three months is unprecedented at the global level.

There is a high risk that malnutrition will continue to rise across the Gaza Strip due to the alarming lack of food, water and health and nutrition services:

• 90 percent of children under the age of 2 and 95 percent of pregnant and lactating women face a severe lack of food – meaning they consumed two or fewer food groups in the previous day – and the food they have access to has the lowest nutritional value.
• 95 percent of households limit meals and portion sizes, and 64 percent of households eat only one meal a day.
• Over 95 percent of households reported that they limited the amount of food that adults received so that young children would have food to eat.

“The sharp increase in malnutrition we are seeing in Gaza is dangerous and entirely preventable,” said Valerie Guarnieri, WFP's Assistant Executive Director for Program Operations. “Children and women especially need constant access to healthy food, clean water, and health and nutrition services. For this to happen, we need decisive improvements in security and humanitarian access, and additional entry points for aid to enter Gaza.”

Inadequate healthy drinking water, as well as insufficient water for cooking and hygienic needs, contribute to poor nutrition. On average, surveyed households had access to less than one liter of safe water per person per day. According to humanitarian standards, the minimum amount of safe water needed in an emergency is 3 liters per person per day, while the overall standard is 15 liters per person, which includes sufficient amounts for drinking, washing and cooking.

Hungry, thirsty and weak, more and more Gazans are getting sick. The report reveals that at least 90 percent of children under the age of 5 are affected by one or more infectious diseases. Seventy percent had diarrhea in the past two weeks, a 23-fold increase compared to the 2022 baseline.

“Hunger and disease are a deadly combination,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme. “Hungry, weakened and deeply traumatized children get sick more often, and sick children, especially those with diarrhea, cannot absorb nutrients well. It's dangerous and tragic and it's happening before our eyes.”

Without more humanitarian aid, the nutrition situation is likely to continue to deteriorate rapidly and on a large scale across the Gaza Strip. Since most health, water and sanitation services have been severely degraded, it is essential to protect and strengthen those that remain functional in order to stop the spread of disease and prevent the worsening of malnutrition.

UNICEF, WFP and WHO are calling for a safe, uninterrupted and sustainable approach for the urgent delivery of multi-sector humanitarian aid across the Gaza Strip. This includes nutritious food, nutritional supplies and basic services for malnourished and at-risk children and women to safely access health and nutrition care and treatment services, especially for infants and young children under 5 years of age. Hospitals and healthcare workers must be protected from attacks in order to safely provide critical treatment and care. The current humanitarian ceasefire remains the best opportunity to save lives and end suffering.

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Note to the editor

Due to security and access challenges across the Gaza Strip, it is almost impossible to collect anthropometric data to measure rates of acute malnutrition. Collection of anthropometric data (MUAC) was only possible in two areas (Northern Gaza and Rafah) among children under 2 years of age. The report therefore used an innovative method of analysis to support this data and found that acute malnutrition is on the rise across the Gaza Strip. This method analyzed data on the drivers of malnutrition – lack of food, disease rates, lack of access to clean water and lack of available health services – which were collected through telephone and SMS questionnaires. Analyzing the key causes, we can conclude that acute malnutrition is rapidly increasing throughout Gaza.

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About WFP

The United Nations World Food Program is the world's largest humanitarian organization that saves lives in emergencies and uses food aid to build a path to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disaster and the impacts of climate change.

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