'Unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition': Israeli blockade leaves Gaza's pregnant women at risk
With the war in Gaza now in its 22nd month and Israel only slightly easing an aid blockade of the Palestinian territory, shortages of everything from food to clean water have hit pregnant women particularly hard.
"I am in my sixth month and I can't provide the basic minimum needs to complete this pregnancy," Arafa told AFP before returning to the makeshift camp where she and her family found shelter after being displaced from their home in the north.
"Doctor Said will give me a blood transfusion because there is no nutrition and when I want to eat or buy food to eat, I cannot because there is nothing to eat," the 34-year-old said, her face thin and pale.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its teams in Gaza were witnessing "a sharp and unprecedented rise in acute malnutrition."
More than 700 pregnant and breastfeeding women, and nearly 500 children, with severe and moderate malnutrition were enrolled at two of their clinics. Numbers at the Gaza City clinic almost quadrupled in under two months, from 293 cases in May to 983 cases at the beginning of July, it said in a statement.
"Due to widespread malnutrition among pregnant women and poor water and sanitation levels, many babies are being born prematurely," said Joanne Perry, an MSF doctor in Gaza.
"Our neonatal intensive care unit is severely overcrowded, with four to five babies sharing a single incubator."
Fathi al-Dahdouh, an obstetrician at the Al-Helou Hospital where Arafa has her check-ups, told AFP that miscarriages had soared since the start of the war and there were eight to nine per day in Gaza City.
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