Like most babies, Sela Majdi Barbakh liked to laugh. But her smile was weak and faded quickly. At 11 months old, Sela should weigh around 20 pounds, but weighs only 8. Her thin limbs wiggled listlessly, and her small hand could barely grasp the finger of the nurse tending to her.
“She is continuously losing weight,” her mother, Najah Hashem Barbakh, 36, told NBC News’ team on the ground in Gaza. Barbakh said she knew of four other children who had died in the same room in the pediatric ward of Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital. She feared Sela would be next.
Sela is one of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip suffering from acute malnutrition as Israeli authorities continue to restrict the entry of aid, including baby formula. Doctors, aid groups and Palestinians say the long-running hunger crisis has reached a tipping point, with deaths from malnutrition surging.
In the past 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza recorded nine deaths from malnutrition, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Friday in a statement, bringing the total number of deaths from malnutrition since the start of the war to 122, including 83 children.
Sela is malnourished and has lost all her muscle and fat, said Dr. Ahmad Al-Fara, head of the hospital’s pediatric department, adding that she suffered from vitamin D and iron deficiencies.
“She is one of the extreme examples of malnutrition,” he said. “She is just only the skin over the bone.”
Barbakh said she brought Sela to the hospital 10 days ago, after her family ran out of food and water.
“I was breastfeeding her naturally at first, but eventually, I stopped producing milk,” she said, because “I had no food or water to nourish myself.”
She switched to formula, “but now that is also unavailable.”
On Wednesday, the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, its sexual and reproductive health agency, said the humanitarian situation unfolding in Gaza was leading to “catastrophic birth outcomes for pregnant women and newborns, threatening the survival of an entire generation.”
Citing new data from Gaza’s health ministry, the UNFPA found that the number of babies born in Gaza had sharply declined in the first six months of the year, dropping by 41% — from 29,000 births in the same period in 2022 to 17,000.
Many of the newborns are in a state of crisis. At least 20 babies have died within 24 hours of birth, UNFPA said, while 33% were born prematurely, underweight or required admission to neonatal intensive care.
Another U.N. report published Thursday said that 9% of Gaza’s children are severely malnourished.
“We are now witnessing a deadly surge in malnutrition-related deaths,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing Wednesday, adding that since July 17, severe acute malnutrition centers are full, “without sufficient supplies for emergency feeding.”
Barbakh, who was displaced from her home in Khan Younis and now lives in a cramped tent with six other family members, said food in Gaza has become extremely scarce, and what little is available in the markets is exorbitantly expensive.
“A single can of formula milk costs 170 shekels ($51), and I cannot afford it for my daughter,” she said.
Another of the malnourished babies in Nasser Hospital was 5-month-old Ramaa, wearing a pink floral dress that crumpled around her slight frame.
She was born weighing 6 pounds, and still does. “Her weight remains the same; it has not increased, not even by one gram,” her mother, 33-year-old Naglaa Waleed Abou Aia, told the NBC News team in Gaza.
Until about two months ago, Waleed Abou Aia said Ramaa “was nursing naturally, but I am suffering from malnutrition due to a lack of food and water, so the child became malnourished.”
Walking through the ward, Elidalis Burgos, an American critical care nurse volunteering at Nasser Hospital, visited several babies and children. One boy in an orange shirt lay in a cot, his limbs and face bandaged after he was injured from a strike that killed his family. A month later, the angles of his bones were visible under his thin skin.
“He’s suffering from a lot of wounds and severe malnutrition,” Burgos said, “as the blockade has not allowed any nutrition for anybody. Without that, it will be very difficult for a good prognosis.”
Israel says food aid is entering Gaza but is not being distributed by aid groups, but those groups say it’s not enough.
Burgos said that she had witnessed the Israeli military throw away baby formula brought in by the international aid workers, doctors and nurses from her medical nongovernmental agency Glia.
“Even as aid workers, the little bit that we try to bring in, it gets thrown away,” she said, adding, “We are not allowed to bring in food or formula for babies or children here.”
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the latest findings by the U.N. or about the severe shortage of baby formula in Gaza. It did not respond when asked about Burgos’ account that soldiers had thrown away baby formula brought in by aid workers.
It maintains that it has allowed aid into Gaza, blaming the U.N. and Hamas for not ensuring its delivery. U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric denied that claim on Thursday, blaming Israel for the failure to deliver aid.
Najah Hashem Barbakh, Sela’s mother, said she hadn’t eaten anything all day. But, she said, the deadly hunger was edging in to take the most vulnerable first. “I keep telling myself: ‘I can endure, but my children can’t.’”
