Warning: This story contains a child with serious injuries and a description of the injury and death of several other babies.
At least six infants have died in the Gaza Strip of cold -related injuries in the past two weeks, according to the local doctors, said information due to a lack of adequate protection and heating.
The temperatures have fallen through the enclave torn by the war in the last few days. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have little to no protection against cold, live in provisional tent camps or destroyed buildings. Local officials have asked for more Humanitarian aid for admission The Gaza Strip – including tents, mobile homes, fuel and heavy machines to remove the debris, in the middle of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Dr. Saeed Salah, director of the patients’ friends in the patient in Gaza, said that the wave of the cold weather had largely affected infants aged one month or disciple.
Five of the six infant deaths were reported by the hospital, said Salah, and they made up for about 60 percent of his infant patients, which were recorded due to “cold injuries”, including hypothermia.
“These (babies) live in a very bad situation with their families. They live in tents without warming, without electricity, without fuel,” he told CBC News on Tuesday.
“That is why this critical (age) group, infants, suffers from the cold.”
Dr. Saeed Salah, director of the patients’ friends in Gaza, said that his hospital has reported five out of six deaths in Gaza in the past two weeks due to the cold weather and the lack of adequate protection in the war in Gaza.
Dr. Ahmed al-Farah, head of the pediatric department in the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza City of Khan Younis, said the Associated Press that it received the body of a two-month-old girl on Tuesday.
“I buttoned her clothes and patted her, but there was no breath or heartbeat,” said the girl’s father, Yusuf Al-Shinbat, who found her early in the morning. “Yesterday I played with her, bathed and smelled. I was satisfied with her. She was a (beautiful) child like the moon.”
Al-Farah said that two other infants in the Nasser Hospital were treated for frostbite. One was later released while the other was in the intensive care unit.
The body of one “was completely blue and its temperature was very low,” said the doctor.
The Gaza Strip, which is located on the Mediterranean coast, learns cold and moist winter, with the temperatures falling below 10 ° C at night.
Before the war, Salah said that the hospital would see one or two cases of deaths from children by hypothermia in the winter season. According to Zaher Al-Wahedi, head of the recording department of the Gaza Health Ministry, this number has increased to 15 this winter season.
“Children cannot handle it”
Wissam Hamad, a 30-year-old father of two children, goes 16 kilometers every day to get from the northeastern city of Beit Hanoun to the friends of the medical facility of the patients in Gaza to see his son, a three-week patient, there on serious cold injuries.
“We have no operational hospitals in Beit Hanoun or north,” Hamad told CBC News on Tuesday.
“The children we experience cannot handle the children with it … We live in tents or protection in schools where walls or windows were broken. I have no warmth in our tent.”
The ceasefire, which held the 16 months of war between Israel and the militant of Hamas, has allowed an increase in humanitarian aid, mainly food, but the residents say that there are still blankets and warm clothes, and there is little wood for fires.
There has been no central stream in the Gaza since the first days of the war, and the fuel for generators is scarce. Many families crowded on damp sand or bare concrete.
The deaths of the infants are announced as civil servants of the World Health Organization (WHO) that the suspension of the US government’s funds had frozen critical operations in the enclave.
In the move of the Trump government to prevent 46 million US dollars for the operation in Gaza Strip, a top that said official in the region on Tuesday.
Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for occupied Palestinian areas, said that these areas include EMT operations, rehabilitation of health facilities, coordination with partner organizations and medical evacuations.
Peeeperkorn from Gaza spoke to reporters at a UN briefing in Geneva in Geneva and said that money for such operations had stayed in who’s funding pipeline and “we are still going to go on with activities”.
Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman, said that he had no figures on how the US funding cuts have affected the entire operations worldwide.
1. Phase of the ceasefire ended until Saturday
In a statement on Monday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas Israel accused of hindering humanitarian aid and accommodation materials, and said it led directly to the death of the six infants.
The mediators who are involved in the Ceasefire deal were required to ensure the entry of essential supplies such as protection, heating and urgent medical objects in Gaza.
The military offensive of Israel, which was presented in response to the attack on October 7, which was led on October 7, 2023, was one of the most fatal and most destructive in recent history. Large areas of the Gaza Strip hit it into ruins and displaced about 1.9 million Palestinians. The hundreds of thousands of people who were able to return to Nordgaza under the ceasefire have settled wherever they can be in the middle of the ruins.
The first phase of the ceasefire ends on Saturday and cannot be extended. When the fight against CVs dramatically drops the current humanitarian aid.
Israeli officials said on Tuesday that Israel is considering an expansion of the 42-day ceasefire in Gaza.
