
Gaza Strip: Malnutrition causes developmental issues for life in children, says Oxfam
Chris McIntosh told RTÉ's Morning Ireland, "Malnutrition in children is a severe problem because it can cause developmental issues".
"Unlike adults, they don't have the ability to spring back from a period of undernutrition and this affects brain development and a host of other health issues that will be with them for the rest of their lives".
"To smell food being cooked is also a total novelty these days," McIntosh added.
McIntosh also said seeing people eating food was rare, and children were reduced to searching for food in bins.
Oxfam was one of more than 100 NGOs that signed a letter saying that new Israeli legislation regulating aid groups is being used to refuse their requests to bring supplies into Gaza.
McIntosh added that Israel's claim that aid trucks waiting to enter Gaza do not meet security standards is false.

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Middle East Eye
3 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
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The National
14 hours ago
- The National
'They aim to kill': Surgeons in West Bank say Palestinian patients are coming in with more complex injuries
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'In the hospitals, you could have just one surgeon on duty and when a case comes in regardless of whether they're a vascular or an orthopaedic surgeon, they may have to deal with that specific trauma,' said Hetty Cane, who organised the programme for DNF. 'And this is a real problem in West Bank because the checkpoints often mean that you can't transport ambulances through them.' The doctors, some with 20 years surgery experience, were taught a variety of skills from ballistics, damage control, vascular surgery, head and maxillofacial trauma, plastic surgery and paediatrics. 'It's essentially an all-round course, supporting skilled surgeons to deal with every field of trauma surgery' Ms Cane added. Hospital isolation Those new skills will be vital for Dr Aweidah, for at times she has been the only surgeon on duty at her hospital. 'If I'm on call in Jericho, I am the only surgeon in the region, so I can't move, so I just have to stay in the hospital to stabilise the casualties before they can be moved between cities,' she said, speaking from the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah. 'As surgeons we are doing so much more than we used to. I'm a general surgeon, so brain surgery is not something I would like to do, but if I am alone in a hospital and the city is closed and I can't get the patient into another hospital safely, I would have to operate.' The key point, she states, is to 'save lives as much as you can in the hospital you're working in'. At times, with major chest injuries, general surgeons have had to 'just open up the chest and operate in the ER' but they had 'very good success stories based on the training with the David Nott Foundation,' she added. 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Middle East Eye
2 days ago
- Middle East Eye
Gaza's hospitals receive 70 bodies over 24 hours
The Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday that 61,897 people have been killed and 155,660 wounded since the start of Israel's war on Gaza. It said hospitals received the bodies of 70 Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours, including eight recovered from under rubble and other locations across Gaza. At least 26 people were killed and 175 injured while seeking aid during the same period. A total of 1,924 Palestinians have now been confirmed killed and 14,288 wounded while trying to access aid. Since 18 March, when Israel broke the ceasefire and imposed a full blockade with heavy air strikes, at least 10,362 people have been killed and 43,619 wounded, according to the ministry. A Palestinian woman sits at the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, 16 August 2025 (Reuters)