The Gaza representative for US-based healthcare NGO MedGlobal fled her home on the strip\u2019s northern coast to Al-Shifa after the Israeli military declared war against Hamas in response to their deadly October 7 terror attack and called on civilians to evacuate the area in preparation for a ground operation. <\/p>\n
More than 1.4 million people have been internally displaced in Gaza, the UN\u2019s humanitarian office OCHA said on Monday. Many civilians have been forced to flee to refugee camps or hospitals that have surpassed capacity, often living in unsanitary living conditions. <\/p>\n
The Al-Shifa hospital complex, she said, is overflowing with people, many of them women and girls sleeping on the floors of the hospital and outside, without access to physical or mental health care, water or privacy. <\/p>\n
\u201cWomen are scattered all over the streets, all over the hospitals,\u201d Musleh said. \u201cI, personally, can\u2019t go to the bathroom more than twice a day\u2026 amid the crowding.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cSome are lucky if they can get a chance to use a bathroom with some 40, 50 or 60 people needing to use it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Musleh is one of hundreds of thousands of women in Gaza facing a desperate health crisis, since Israel\u2019s complete blockade of the strip curtailed critical reproductive supplies, including pregnancy, postpartum and menstruation products, as well as basic necessities like drinking water and food. Meanwhile, mothers say they are dealing with the desperate reality that they have no way to protect themselves, or their children, from Israel\u2019s relentless bombardment, which has struck residential areas, hospitals and schools. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s airstrikes have killed at least 9,155 people, according to figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, drawn from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. The vast majority of fatalities \u2013 73% \u2013 are women, children and the elderly, according to the health ministry. <\/p>\n
Human rights groups say Israel\u2019s mass bombardment of civilian areas, evacuation orders and complete blockade of the territory amount to war crimes. Israel has said it is targeting Hamas operatives in Gaza, adding that the militant group \u201cintentionally embeds its assets in civilian areas\u201d and uses civilians as human shields. <\/p>\n
Reham Ahmed Al-Sadi had dreamed of having a baby girl. Now, nine months pregnant with her second child, she is preparing to give birth in a war zone, while trying to keep her family alive. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe war destroyed my joy about my pregnancy,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor working with M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, said rampant water, food and drug shortages have unleashed an \u201cavalanche of human suffering\u201d in Gazan hospitals. <\/p>\n
Rafah, the sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt\u00a0through which Palestinians or aid can pass in and out remained shut for the first few weeks of the war. It was partially opened recently to allow a small number of aid trucks to trickle through \u2013 as well as a limited number of injured Palestinians and foreign nationals out. <\/p>\n
Without essential fuel supplies, and the bombardment ongoing, nearly half of hospitals are now out of service, the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
In times of severe stress, women are more likely to miscarry or give birth prematurely, jeopardizing \u201cthe survival of the baby,\u201d Haj-Hassan said. Diminished electricity supplies are a \u201cdeath sentence\u201d for patients who rely on medical equipment such as ventilators, or dialysis machines. <\/p>\n
Premature babies require incubators, breathing machines, and infusion pumps for recovery, all of which depend on electricity, she added. \u201cWithout any of those things, those premature babies won\u2019t survive.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Monday, the humanitarian agency CARE International reported pregnant patients are being forced to undergo emergency C-sections without anesthetics.\u202f\u202fWomen are being discharged within as little as three hours after giving birth due to a lack of capacity in hospitals, according to CARE. <\/p>\n
Food shortages pose a threat to the health of the 283,000 children under the age of five as well as pregnant or lactating women, said Hiba Tibi, CARE West Bank and Gaza country director. <\/p>\n
Haj-Hassan said some of her colleagues in Gaza only have access to 33 milliliters (about 1.12 oz) of drinking water per day \u2013 a fraction of a cup \u2013 warning that thinning water supplies hamper mothers\u2019 abilities to breastfeed their babies or feed them formula. <\/p>\n
Amal, who was displaced from her home in Gaza City to Khan Younis in the south of the strip, is nine months pregnant and nervously awaiting what her birth might look like. <\/p>\n
Her next pressing concern: how to care for her child. Limited water stocks must be boiled over wood or old gas to become drinkable. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re lucky if you get a bucket filled with water,\u201d Amal said. \u201c[Mothers] are giving their babies adult milk. They boil it. Or (to feed babies), they crush some biscuits and add water to it, then stir them together. That\u2019s a meal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Haj-Hassan said there is an outbreak of diarrheal disease, and respiratory tract infections including pneumonia, because people are sheltering in close living quarters. <\/p>\n
Eman Bashir, 32, said most of the children she knows, including her own, \u201care suffering from diarrhea and vomiting.\u201d The mother of three is in Khan Younis too, having been displaced from the north after the Israeli army\u2019s evacuation order. <\/p>\n
She added that she had heard of some women giving birth in schools because \u201cmost hospitals are not operational.\u201d <\/p>\n
From sexual health to menstruation, the conflict is impacting all aspects of women\u2019s health. <\/p>\n
Barr warned that in crisis situations, rates of sexual violence are likely to increase \u201cbecause there is a feeling of impunity.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cMost pharmacies have stopped working,\u201d\u00a0Bashir added. \u201cEven the pills (used by women to stop their periods) are no longer enough. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have started regressing to the old ages, where women use pieces of cloth (during periods). Women cannot avoid facing their monthly periods in this situation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Amal, the resident who was displaced to Khan Younis, said she has heard of many women using birth control pills to either stop or reduce the blood flow during menstruation. Those who do not, she said, use \u201cold methods, clothes that are washed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Nesma ElFar, the commercial director of MotherBeing, said that the Cairo-based health platform is working with the NGO Together For Tomorrow, to send more than 400,000 donations of sanitary products, including pads, reusable panties, wipes and diapers, to civilians in Gaza. <\/p>\n
Palestinian mothers are balancing their own health care needs with caregiving responsibilities for their children, many of whom are affected by the psychological trauma of war. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen asked why, [the child] said, \u2018I just want to die. I can\u2019t deal with the fear of dying anymore,\u2019\u201d Haj-Hassan added. She said medical workers use the term \u201cwounded child no surviving family,\u201d to describe children in Gaza who have been orphaned by war. <\/p>\n
So many aspects of motherhood, once routine, are now a matter of life or death. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day, a sister and mother, a woman loses her husband, her father, her brother. These are the women of Palestine. These are the women of Gaza,\u201d said Musleh, the 50-year-old woman sheltering in Al-Shifa. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are under fire, under death, under ethnic cleansing, under injustice \u2013 under the injustice of the world, which sees with its eyes what is happening and is silent.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
The Gaza representative for US-based healthcare NGO MedGlobal fled her home on the strip\u2019s northern coast to Al-Shifa after the Israeli military declared war against Hamas in response to their deadly October 7 terror attack and called on civilians to evacuate the area in preparation for a ground operation. More than 1.4 million people have <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11178,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}