Struck down by malnutrition, pregnant Gazan woman can only pray for a healthy baby

Straits Times

11-07-2025

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GAZA - At six months pregnant, displaced Palestinian woman Fatima Arfa wishes she could be buying cute clothes and toys for the special day when she delivers a healthy, safe child.
Instead she spends much of her time seeking medical help in war-ravaged Gaza, weak and fearful that malnutrition will sabotage her pregnancy as Israel presses on with a military campaign that has led to widespread hunger among children and adults and reduced the enclave to rubble.
She longs for simple foods like milk, eggs and red meat that could improve her health and increase the chances of delivering a healthy baby. But just trying to deal with deficiencies is exhausting and highly risky under steady bombardment.
"I'm coming from a faraway place, and on foot too, because I need to have a blood transfusion because of a very big deficiency, malnutrition," said Arfa, 34, staring at medical imaging of her unborn baby.
In June, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned an estimated 55,000 pregnant women in Gaza face growing health risks such as miscarriage, stillbirth and undernourished newborns.
Tackling those grim realities is challenging for doctors who face severe shortages of medicine and fuel to keep overwhelmed hospitals running as the nearly two-year war between Israel and Hamas rages.
During a consultation with Arfa, Fathi al-Dahdouh, director of external clinics at Al-Helou Hospital, examines documents about her health.
She has anaemia and hopefully she can receive two units of blood and needs admission to hospital because she can't live a normal life with low energy levels, or walk, he said.
"We hope that God will stop this war and open the crossings so that green food supplies, fruits, and vitamins can enter, along with these things," said al-Dahdouh.
Thousands of starving Gazans who frantically wave pots around at food collection points risk violence merely walking to those areas. Israeli air strikes can hit at any minute and most Gaza residents have been displaced.
Arfa is getting weaker by the day and generating enough energy on a meagre diet is a huge challenge.
"It is very difficult, and in the middle of the heat. I leave small children at my house, and until now they may not have had breakfast, and neither have I," she said, sitting in a makeshift tent near her children, wondering how she will be able to support them, and husband Zahi.
Her daughter serves food from a cooking pot into a bowl for the whole family of 7.
Zahi, 40, complains that much of Gaza's population relies on mostly lentils.
Sometimes he wanders around flattened neighbourhoods desperate for flour, anything that could give his wife the strength to produce life in a strip where Israeli strikes have killed over 57,000 people, according to Gaza authorities.
"More than once, I was exposed to death. I failed every time I tried to even get a can of tuna or a can of peas for the children. I couldn't," said Zahi.
The Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in 2023 killed around 1,200 people and the militant group seized 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. At least 20 are believed to still be alive. REUTERS