'If the baby could speak, she would scream': the risky measures to feed small babies in Gaza
"If the baby could speak, she would scream at us, asking what we are putting into her stomach," her aunt, Abir Hamouda said.
Muntaha grimaced and squirmed as her grandmother fed her the paste with a syringe.
Muntaha's family is one of many in Gaza facing dire choices to try to feed babies, especially those below the age of six months who cannot process solid food.
Infant formula is scarce after a plummet in aid access to Gaza. Many women cannot breastfeed due to malnourishment, while other babies are separated from their mothers due to displacement, injury or, in Muntaha's case, death.
Her family says the baby's mother was hit by a bullet while pregnant, gave birth prematurely while unconscious in intensive care, and died a few weeks later. The director of the Shifa Hospital described such a case in a Facebook post on April 27, four days after Muntaha was born.
"I am terrified about the fate of the baby," said her grandmother, Nemah Hamouda. "We named her after her mother...hoping she can survive and live long, but we are so afraid, we hear children and adults die every day of hunger."
Muntaha now weighs about 3.5 kilograms, her family said, barely more than half of what a full-term baby her age would normally weigh. She suffers stomach problems like vomiting and diarrhoea after feeding.
Health officials, aid workers and Gazan families told Reuters many families are feeding infants herbs and tea boiled in water, or grinding up bread or sesame. Humanitarian agencies also reported cases of parents boiling leaves in water, eating animal feed and grinding sand into flour.
Feeding children solids too early can disrupt their nutrition, cause stomach problems, and risk choking, paediatric health experts say.
"It's a desperate move to compensate for the lack of food," said UNICEF spokesperson Salim Oweis. "When mothers can't breastfeed or provide proper infant formula they resort to grinding chickpeas, bread, rice, anything that they can get their hands on to feed their children... it is risking their health because these supplies are not made for infants to feed on."
Gaza's spiralling humanitarian crisis prompted the main world hunger monitoring body on Tuesday to say a worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding and immediate action is needed to avoid widespread death. Images of emaciated Palestinian children have shocked the world.
Gazan health authorities have reported more and more people dying from hunger-related causes. The total so far stands at 154, among them 89 children, most of whom died in the last few weeks.
With the international furore over Gaza's ordeal growing, Israel announced steps over the weekend to ease aid access. But the U.N. World Food Programme said on Tuesday it was still not getting the permissions it needed to deliver enough aid.
Israel and the U.S. accuse militant group Hamas of stealing aid - which the militants deny - and the U.N. of failing to prevent it. The U.N. says it has not seen evidence of Hamas diverting much aid. Hamas accuses Israel of causing starvation and using aid as a weapon, which the Israeli government denies.
Humanitarian agencies say there is almost no infant formula left in Gaza. The cans available in the market cost over $100 – impossible to afford for families like Muntaha's, whose father has been jobless since the war closed his falafel business and displaced the family from their home.
In the paediatric ward of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, the infant formula supply is mostly depleted.
One mother showed how she poured thick tahini sesame paste into a bottle and mixed it with water.
"I am using this instead of milk, to compensate her for milk, but she won't drink it," said Azhar Imad, 31, the mother of four-month-old Joury.
"I also make her fenugreek, anise, caraway, any kind of herbs (mixed with water)," she said, panicked as she described how instead of nourishing her child, these attempts were making her sick.
Medical staff at the hospital spoke of helplessness, watching on as children's health deteriorated with no way to safely feed them.
"Now, children are being fed either water or ground hard legumes, and this is harmful for children in Gaza," said doctor Khalil Daqran.
"If the hunger continues ... within three or four days, if the child doesn't get access to milk immediately, then they will die," he said.
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BBC News
13 hours ago
- BBC News
First war-injured Gazan child arrives in UK for treatment
Majid Shaghnobi can't eat or speak like he used to. He can't with his injured mouth covered by a surgical mask, his eyes were beaming as he arrived at London's Heathrow airport on a flight from Cairo, with his mother, brother and little sister."I'm happy to be in England and to get treatment," the 15-year-old told was out trying to get humanitarian aid in the Kuwaiti area of northern Gaza in February last year when an Israeli tank shell exploded nearby, shattering his jaw bone and injuring his leg."One of my friends helped me and took me to the hospital," he says. "They thought I was dead. I had to move my hand to show them that I was alive."Doctors in Gaza saved his life and Majid spent months in hospital, breathing through a tracheostomy tube, before he was evacuated to Egypt in February this year - with Israel's permission - for further medical he's in the UK for surgery at Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London to restore the function of his face. He is the first Gazan child to arrive in the UK for treatment for war injuries, almost two years into a conflict in which more than 50,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured, according to the UN children's charity, Unicef. His arrival follows months of work by a group of volunteer medical professionals who came together in November 2023 to set up Project Pure Hope, which helps injured and sick Gazan children get to the UK for treatment. It is funded by private donations."The UK is home to some of the best paediatric facilities in the world, yet while countries like the US, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and many others have stepped up to help, the UK has yet to do the same," Project Pure Hope arrival in the UK comes less than a week after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer promised to evacuate more badly injured children, although the government has released few details of the medical team – all working for free – will include craniofacial, plastic and orthodontic surgeons, with hospital bills paid for by private donations."If we're able to give him a face and a jaw which he can use then it won't be completely normal, but hopefully he'll be able to feed himself and speak, and his facial expressions will be better," says lead surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani, a professor of Paediatric Neurosurgery at Great Ormond Street."Hopefully that's going to make a big impact on how he lives and on his future."Our hope is that we will be able to help many more children like him in the coming months. It's our collective moral responsibility." Doctors from the hospital have previously treated patients from Ukraine, and last year helped separate co-joined twins in Jeelani is disappointed that it has taken so long for the first child from Gaza to be treated for war injuries in the UK."As a doctor and as a human, I don't quite understand why it's taken us over 20 months to get to this stage," he Pure Hope has identified 30 critically injured children in Gaza who it hopes to help bring to the UK. It says the government's announcement is "vital and long-overdue", but time is of the essence."Every day of delay risks the lives and futures of children who deserve a chance to live, to recover and to rebuild a life," said Omar Din, its co-founder. In April, the group of volunteers secured visas for two girls -13-year-old Rama and five-year-old Ghena - with life-long medical conditions to also have privately funded operations in the were brought to London after being evacuated to Egypt from Gaza, where - with the destruction of the healthcare system there - they weren't receiving the treatment they I met them in early May, Rama has put on weight and Ghena, who was deeply traumatised and withdrawn, is noticeably more has had laser surgery to relieve the pressure in her left eye, which she was at risk of losing. And Rama has had exploratory surgery for a serious bowel girls are doing well, their mothers they are sick with worry - finding it hard to eat and sleep - about family members left behind in Gaza, who are now struggling to feed themselves."It's better than Gaza here," Rama tells me. "There are no bombs and no fear."But friends message her from Gaza, telling her that they haven't found bread for 10 days and she says her older brother is sleeping on the street after first his home, and then his tent, were bombed."They're hungry. So I don't want to eat either. I feel like I'm still there with them," Rama experts said this week there was mounting evidence that widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease is driving a rise in hunger-related deaths among the 2.1 million Palestinians in who suffered life-changing injuries while out trying to get food for his family, is also worried about his two brothers still in Gaza."I'm scared that they'll die or something will happen to them," he says. "I just want them to be safe."
Sky News
14 hours ago
- Sky News
Gazan boy, 15, given hero's welcome as he arrives in UK for urgent medical treatment
A 15-year-old boy from Gaza brought to the UK for urgent medical treatment has told Sky News of his joy and relief. Majd Alshagnobi arrived at London's Heathrow Airport with his mother and two siblings to a hero's welcome on Wednesday evening, with well-wishers bearing flowers, gifts, and banners. It has been a tortuous wait for the teenager, who suffered severe facial injuries in February 2024 when Israeli tank shells exploded near him and a group of friends. Majd lost part of his face as well as his entire jaw and all his teeth. It has left him and his family traumatised. His mother, Islam, told me that doctors at the Mamadani hospital in Gaza were shocked that her son survived the incident. "When Majd first got to the hospital, they thought he was dead because of the severities of the injuries on his face and leg," she said. "But when he raised his arm, they realised he was still alive. "All the operating rooms were busy, so they carried out the operation in the kitchen to save him. "It was very difficult for him to breathe, and they had to feed him through tubes and syringes through his nose. He really suffered." 2:56 Majd stood awestruck at the window of the small central London apartment where his family had been accommodated. He wore a blue surgical mask but gently pulled it down to reveal a smile. "Thank God I have the opportunity to receive treatment here… that's the reason I have come. To get treatment," he said. "Since I arrived, I have felt so much happier. "We've been greeted in such a nice way, with gifts and things to help us." But it will take time for the young football fan to come to terms with the trauma he has suffered. When I ask him what he remembers from his time in Gaza, he replies: "I saw dogs eating bodies and I was terrified, and I thought I was going to die. Stuff like that…" His mother, who has had to leave two of her children in Gaza with their father, tells me: "Right now my family in Gaza live in tents. We've lost our home, we've lost our memories, we've lost our dreams. Nothing is left in Gaza. "My two children who are still in Gaza with their father, every day I wake up in fear that they have been killed. Anything could happen to them in Gaza." Around 5,000 children have been evacuated from Gaza, with the majority going to Egypt and Gulf countries. Majd is the third child to come to the UK with the help of the charity Project Pure Hope. The group of volunteers have been campaigning successive governments for the last 20 months to create a scheme which would allow for the evacuation of 30 to 50 children. The charity has raised the money to bring the children and their families to the UK, and cover their medical costs, privately. Last week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the government was "accelerating efforts" to evacuate Gazan children who need urgent medical care in the UK. Omar Din, the co-founder of Project Pure Hope, says it is time for the government to step in and take responsibility. "We're hoping following the prime minister's announcement last Friday, that in the coming days we'll have some concrete actions," he said. "The more we wait, the more children die who we could be saving. "We've done this privately because there was no other option available but myself, and members of my founding team, have done lots of this work for Ukrainian refugees previously. There's no reason we shouldn't be doing that for Gazans."
Telegraph
16 hours ago
- Telegraph
Sickness and starvation stalk Somalia's children in the ‘City of Death'
At a stabilisation centre in Baidoa, southern Somalia, Amina anxiously watches over her one-year-old son, Shariif, who is suffering from a deadly combination of severe malnutrition and multiple health complications. Skinny and underdeveloped for his age, Shariif sits blank-faced and still on Amina's lap, a pale mosquito net hanging over them like a cloud. 'He was so sick, I thought I would have to give up on him,' Amina, 22, says. She walked several miles from a displacement camp to get medical help. 'I prepared myself for the worst,' she says. 'I prayed to God.' After twelve days of treatment, Shariif is now ready to be discharged. Doctors say they were able to save him only because of the specialised care offered at this main stabilisation centre. Once known as the 'City of Death', Baidoa is the epicentre of Somalia's neglected and under-reported humanitarian crisis. When rains fail, or funding falters, the fragile infrastructure and sprawling camps quickly become the front line of hunger. All along the colourless walls of the clinic, there are metal beds with mothers wrapped in long, vibrant hijabs, holding tiny malnourished infants. The children are those too sick to be treated anywhere else – suffering from severe malnutrition coupled with deadly illnesses like diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria or anaemia. Yet, in the coming weeks, this vital lifeline may close its doors. It is one of more than 120 health facilities across Somalia that are at risk due to cuts in international aid, according to Save the Children. Some have already shut, services have been scaled back, and supplies of medicine and therapeutic food are running perilously low. President Donald Trump's administration abruptly froze large chunks of foreign aid in January and it was fragile places like Somalia that suffered first. Lifesaving projects were shuttered almost overnight, with vulnerable women and children paying the heaviest price. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was the world's biggest aid donor, accounting for around 40 per cent of the global humanitarian system and a fifth of development assistance. The Lancet warned last month that the cuts could cause more than 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 – a third of them among children under five. For those who were already living on the edge, the threat is real and immediate. Shariif has already been admitted twice in the past few months for lifesaving nutritional care. 'He is much stronger than he was, but he needs therapy food,' said Dr Mustafa Mohammed. 'After this month, I don't know if he will have it.' While Trump's cuts have been felt deeply across the globe, Somalia is among the most aid-dependent countries on Earth. The country lies at a grim crossroads of deep poverty, protracted conflict and climate change, which brings both severe droughts and floods. Large parts of Somalia remain under the control or influence of Al Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked militant group that has waged an insurgency for nearly two decades. In areas under their rule, there is no access to healthcare or education, and farmers are burdened by crippling taxation. This year, the conflict has intensified – deaths from fighting are soaring as the militants advance on multiple fronts. Foreign troops are poised to withdraw, or face an uncertain future, amid a refusal by Washington to guarantee financial support. There are growing fears among observers that Mogadishu could fall to Al Shabab, leaving the fate of one the world's oldest state-building projects hanging in the balance. A key town fell to the rebels this week. Meanwhile, local forces, backed by US and UAE airpower, have been waging an all-out war against ISIS in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in the north. The day before The Telegraph visited Baidoa, clashes erupted following an Al Shabaab suicide car bomb, with 15 were reportedly killed in the fighting. Repeated famines have ravaged the country, driving millions into overcrowded displacement camps where poor sanitation means disease is rife. Nearly a fifth of the population are internally displaced. Baidoa is scattered with hundreds of camps that house more than 800,000 people – clusters of patchwork tents, cobbled together from scavenged and donated material. They are cramped and dangerous, and subject to tribal law. Amina and Shariif live in a camp after fleeing Al Shabaab rule. She has no income and is dependent on humanitarian assistance like cash, food and healthcare. That support has now all but dried up. Moazzam Malik, CEO of Save the Children – the largest NGO provider of health and nutrition services to children in Somalia – told The Telegraph that it was the abrupt and unpredictable nature of the cuts that hurt the most. USAID previously funded about 65 per cent of Somalia's humanitarian aid, and StC now has a funding shortfall of around 20 per cent. 'Children and vulnerable mothers are dying as a result of the aid cuts,' he said. 'We have documented that in South Sudan and we strongly suspect the same is happening here in Somalia.' A rise in deaths is difficult to quantify. Clinics closing or scaling back means fewer people receive care or have their deaths recorded. Ongoing conflict makes much of the country inaccessible to foreign organisations. Yet when US-funded feeding centres shut their doors, babies wasted away in their mothers' arms while older siblings roamed markets begging for work. Health facilities were left operating only a few days a week, forcing dangerously long waits for care. Aid workers said clinics ran low on therapeutic food and vital drugs, forcing staff to make impossible choices. Vital outreach teams who had been making significant ground were disbanded, while doctors fear preventable diseases could gain ground, preying on bodies weakened by hunger. In Baidoa alone, Malik said, two-thirds of the charity's staff have already lost their jobs. 'There's every risk that these cuts could also stoke instability and tip over into conflict,' Malik continued. 'There's every risk that people could take desperate measures and look to migrate to places where they believe they can have a better future.' The Telegraph visited a number of facilities around Baidoa, but they and the displaced people we spoke to could not be named for safety reasons. Doctors said that around 30 per cent of local health services have already closed because of funding shortfalls, with another 30 per cent running at reduced capacity. 'It has affected women and children particularly badly,' he Dr Suleiman Adam, whose health centre used to open six days a week, but now operates only two. 'If a sick child spends three days waiting to see a doctor, that leads to potentially life-threatening complications.' Dr Adam used to see seven to ten malnutrition cases daily, now he sees twenty and the caseload is becoming imaginable. Despite lay-offs, some health workers are working unpaid to assist. 'Death rates have increased,' he said. 'We used to be able to receive people from the poorest areas. Now they come, see the clinic is closed that day, and go back. They die in their tents.' Nearly 4.4 million people – close to a quarter of Somalia's population – are facing severe hunger, a figure expected to rise as aid cuts bite deeper and if there are further failed rains – Somalia endured its worst drought on record between 2021 to 2023, with an unprecedented five consecutive failed rainy seasons. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported 'surging' cases of severe malnutrition among children arriving at their centres across Somalia. In March, the European Commission's Food Security Portal raised its 2025 forecast for acutely malnourished children in Somalia by 47,000 to 1.8 million. UNICEF estimates that almost half a million are at immediate risk of death without urgent care. Malnutrition significantly raises the risk of disease, making children eleven times more likely to die from common childhood illnesses. Combined with the crushing impact of poverty, it can coincide with spikes in HIV, malaria, cholera, and respiratory infections. It can deprive children of the ability to fully develop their brains and bodies, with many remaining shorter and physically weaker into adulthood. The younger the child is, the greater the impact will be. Somalia was already one of the most dangerous places in the world to give birth, with a woman dying during one in every 162 deliveries. At a malnutrition clinic, Bint Ahmed cradles her youngest son in her arms. He is malnourished with a skin infection behind his ear and she has brought him to see doctors. At centres like this, mothers line up with their children to have them weighed in a bucket, and stretched out on wooden measuring boards. The dimensions of their tiny arms are recorded and they are given vaccinations. In 2018, Bint Ahmed lost her first son to malnutrition. Each of her four subsequent children have needed nutrition support. 'I am so worried. My first child died and we may no longer get food for this one,' she said. 'I used to come here and get medication for him. They just give me a prescription now, but I don't have money to buy it.' Doctors and midwives say they can no longer afford to feed non-critical patients, including new mothers who need nutrition to produce milk for their babies. Baidoa's humanitarian workers say the fallout also has a social fallout – years of progress is being undone in education enrolment and gender-based violence. With food and cash assistance programmes, poverty and crime have surged, including theft and violent robberies. 'Children of seven or eight walk around the market now asking for work,' said one aid worker. 'They no longer go to school and it has become a protection issue.' Both of Baidoa's legal aid services, which used to help survivors of sexual violence seek justice, have closed. Support services that once provided legal help, psychosocial care and protection are vanishing. It is leaving vulnerable women and girls without support or protection as violence and instability grow. Outreach programmes to combat forced marriage and female genital mutilation have stalled. 'When people were getting assistance like cash and food, they would listen. But it is dangerous for our workers to visit these desperate communities now,' said gender-based violence case worker Samira Abdullahi Ali. 'These were not just projects. We are saving lives.' 'If you walk around the local markets,' one women's rights activist said, 'you hear women saying: 'Donald Trump caused these problems'.' When Trump slashed foreign aid, he declared that America should stop spending on causes 'that are not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President.' His retreat is part of a broader global pull-back. France, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland have all trimmed aid budgets in recent years. Germany has cut nearly €1 billion from humanitarian spending. The UK, once the world's third-largest donor, plans to shrink its aid budget from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of national income by 2027, representing a cut of about £6 billion a year. Even before Trump's sweeping reductions, the number of people the World Food Programme was able to reach a month in Somalia had been slashed by more than half. Behind the figures lies a powerful political undercurrent – soaring inflation, ballooning debt and the cost of conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine have squeezed government coffers. Nationalist politics has fuelled scepticism about pouring money overseas. Yet it is in stark contrast to attitudes of the past. In the 1990s, the US launched a military intervention, Operation Restore Hope, sending thousands of troops to protect food convoys when Somalia suffered an intense famine after the collapse of its government. Images of skeletal children and bodies lining Baidoa's streets shocked the world. 'Back then, there was a sense of moral responsibility,' said Omar Mohammed, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. 'Somalia was a test of America's role after the Cold War.' The mission, however, ended in bloody disaster when eighteen US soldiers were killed in Mogadishu's Black Hawk Down battle. The scar still shapes American foreign policy today. Now MAGA-era politics have turbocharged isolationism and hardened resistance to foreign aid, and to conflicts perceived as 'forever wars.' 'There's this narrative now that aid is wasteful or even harmful, and Somalia's caught up in that,' Mohammed said. 'People wonder why billions went into state-building with so little to show.' Countries like Somalia have now fallen off the agenda, and Washington no longer sees Al Shabaab as an immediate threat to the homeland. 'It's become a niche interest,' said Mohammed. Yet Dr Ali Said Fiqi, the acting President of the Baidoa region, warned that the shift could undermine US soft power and push disillusioned youth into crime or into the arms of extremist groups like Al Shabaab. It could also drive more people to risk dangerous journeys abroad. 'Without humanitarian aid, people will be forced to go searching for a better life,' he said. 'These cuts will lead to more people trying to get to Europe. There's no future left for them.' That comes with its own risks. Leila, 39, who was seeking help for her malnourished child in Baidoa, lost her husband six years ago after he attempted the migrant route to Europe. 'He couldn't find enough work here to feed us properly,' she said. 'I didn't hear anything for four months. Then we heard his boat had crashed and he had died,' she said. She was left alone with four daughters. It is the abruptness of Trump's sweeping aid cuts that threatens devastating consequences, with no one stepping in so far to fill the void. Yet many argue that simply plugging funding gaps will not be enough. The entire aid system may need rethinking if fragile states like Somalia are to break free from chronic dependence. The recent UN Development Conference in Seville ended without any solid commitments, with vulnerable women and children paying the price. Malik, head of Save the Children, believes the traditional model of aid is broken. The old donor-recipient approach, rooted in charity and voluntary pledges, no longer suits a world grappling with shared threats like conflict, pandemics and climate change. Tens of billions of dollars have poured into Somalia since Operation Restore Hope, yet it remains a fragile state, with life expectancy under fifty and GDP per capita below five hundred dollars. It is still one of the most dangerous and famine-prone places in the world, and the second most corrupt country in Africa, according to Transparency International. Malik proposes a UN convention on international development to replace today's voluntary system with countries agreeing to mutual obligations and shared responsibility. It is about seeing aid as a global investment in security, prosperity and resilience. 'Negotiating that would be hard. It will take time,' he said. 'But this is the space we need to move into – where we live together on this planet and progress together.' Such investment could also reduce migration pressures – a crucial political issue in an increasingly inward-looking world. Instead of Fortress Britain, Malik argues, we need to see that we are all connected and that investing in international cooperation is how we secure our future. 'This isn't just about money,' Malik said. 'This is a battle of ideas, it's about the shape of the world we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in.'
