I'm witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza's children – why is the world letting it happen?
This is my third time in Gaza since December 2023 as a volunteer surgeon with Medical Aid for Palestinians. I experienced mass casualty events and raised the alarm about malnutrition back in January 2024. But nothing has prepared me for the sheer horror I'm witnessing now: the weaponisation of starvation against an entire population.
The malnutrition crisis has become catastrophic since my last visit. Every day I watch patients deteriorate and die, not from their injuries, but because they are too malnourished to survive surgery. The surgical repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, then they die. It is happening repeatedly, and it is heartbreaking to watch. Four babies have died in the last few weeks in this hospital – not from bombs or bullets, but from starvation.
Families and staff do their best to try to bring in what they can, but there simply isn't enough food available in Gaza. For infants, we have virtually no baby formula. Children are being given 10% dextrose (sugar water), which has no nutritional value, and often their mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed. When an international colleague tried to bring baby formula into Gaza, Israeli authorities confiscated it.
Benjamin Netanyahu's approach is twofold: block food from entering Gaza while leaving desperate civilians no choice but to visit militarised distribution points to receive some limited supplies. Until May, Gaza had more than 400 aid distribution sites where people could access food safely. Now there are just four of these militarised zones in the south where starving families are in constant danger of attack.
I'm hearing about dozens of trauma casualties flooding Gaza's emergency departments daily – many of them with gunshot wounds from these militarised distribution points. I have operated on boys aged 12 to 15, whose relatives say they were shot while trying to get food for their families. Last week a 12-year-old died on the operating table, shot through the abdomen at what can only be described as a death trap for those seeking basic sustenance.
My colleagues in the emergency department have also reported a disturbing pattern: injuries concentrated on specific body parts on different days – heads, legs, genitals – suggesting deliberate targeting of those body parts.
In recent days, I operated on two women who were shot by quadcopters while sheltering in their tents near one of the locations, according to the people who brought them in. One was breastfeeding her child when she was hit; the second was pregnant. Thankfully, both have survived their injuries so far. These women weren't even seeking aid – they were simply sheltering in areas that are supposedly 'safe' but exposed to indiscriminate fire from the IDF's weaponised hunger apparatus.
It is not just the patients here who are malnourished, but also healthcare workers. When I first arrived, I barely recognised colleagues I had worked with last year – some had lost 30kg. At lunchtime, some doctors and nurses head towards the distribution sites, knowing they risk death but having no choice if they want to feed their families.
Nasser hospital is the last major functioning hospital in southern Gaza, but we're operating at breaking point, reeling from previous attacks and overwhelmed by mass casualties, all while facing shortages of everything. Netanyahu's systematic destruction of Gaza's healthcare system has funnelled desperate medical needs into this single facility while directly targeting healthcare workers and patients. Just this week, one of our dear theatre nurses was killed in his tent along with his three small children.
I want to be clear – what is being done to Palestinians in Gaza is barbaric and entirely preventable. I cannot believe we have come to a point where the world is watching as the people of Gaza are forced to endure starvation and gunfire, all while food and medical aid sits across the border just miles away from them.
The enforced malnutrition and attacks on civilians will kill thousands more if not stopped immediately. Every day of inaction means more children will die not just from bullets or bombs, but from hunger. A permanent ceasefire, the free and safe flow of aid through the UN-led system, and the lifting of the blockade are needed now – and all can be achieved with political will.
The UK government's continued complicity in Israel's atrocities is unconscionable, and I do not want to spend another day operating on children who have been shot and starved by a military our government supports. History will judge not just those who committed these crimes, but those who stood by and watched.
From inside Nasser hospital, I am telling you: this is deliberate. This is preventable. And this must stop now.
Prof Nick Maynard is a consultant surgeon at Oxford university hospital who has been travelling regularly to Gaza for 15 years. He is volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians at Nasser hospital in Gaza
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