Children in Gaza are Dying of Hunger, How Can We Explain to Them?

Who and how is going to explain to them why they feel less and less strong, with less desire to play, why their belly growling in the midst of so much helplessness.

It's too terrible. It would be necessary to invent words, to shield one's soul in an impossible way, to be able to give those children some reasons?, to console them while... they die of hunger.

Even writing it hurts, it becomes difficult. But reality is screaming: "The Gaza Strip is about to witness an explosion of preventable child deaths that would worsen the already unbearable level of child mortality in Gaza."

This was stated by UNICEF Deputy Executive Director of Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations, Ted Chaiban, adding that if the conflict between Palestine and Israel does not end now, “children's nutrition will continue to plummet, causing preventable deaths or health problems.”

One out of six children under two years of age (15.6%) suffers from acute malnutrition. Of them, almost 3% suffer from severe emaciation, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, putting young children at the highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment.

These are data revealed by the most recent analysis of the nutritional situation and vulnerability in Gaza, published last Monday by the Global Nutrition Group.

The study highlights that these figures, collected in January, could be even more dramatic in the present, and insists that the situation is especially extreme north of Gaza, where they have received practically no aid for weeks.

Before the hostilities of recent months, emaciation in the Gaza Strip was rare, with only 0.8% of children under 5 years of age suffering from acute malnutrition. The current rate of 15.6% among children under 2 years of age in northern Gaza shows a serious and rapid decline. Such a decrease in the nutritional status of a population in three months is unprecedented at a global scale, the text reads.
Both Unicef and WHO, and the World Food Program have denounced such a drama and warned about the urgency of stopping the war situation between Israel and Palestine to prevent the deaths of children in the Gaza Strip from continuing to increase.

Since last December 22, Unicef was already speaking about the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip. It then warned about the “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity” that already translate into deaths today.

After 20 weeks of war , food and drinking water are becoming increasingly scarce in the Gaza Strip, while disease and desperation are proliferating.

The bombings don’t stop, nor does the number of wounded and dead, of families and people destroyed by pain and absolute chaos, continue to grow.

If there are no words now to explain to those children who are dying of hunger, to console them, which will be the words with which to explain the generations to come this horrible holocaust that we are witnessing today?

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff