Dr. Saeed Salah, the medical director of the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society Hospital (PFBS), northern Gaza, warned of a “disaster” in the rising number of babies suffering from hypothermia, as they try to survive winter conditions in the strip.
In the past two weeks, eight babies with hypothermia were admitted to the medical facility in Gaza City, said Dr. Salah. Of those, three were admitted to the intensive care unit, and three others died “within hours” of arrival.
Then on Tuesday, a fourth baby who was just 69 days old died overnight, Dr. Salah added. Further south, two other babies died with hypothermia symptoms in Nasser Hospital, Khan Younis, health workers there told journalists.
Dr. Salah said more caravans, tents and fuel were needed to “bring warmth to the people.” He added that such provisions would stop this kind of “catastrophe from repeating itself” and “prevent the death of neonatal babies from hypothermia and frostbite.”
A fragile ceasefire has offered a moment of reprieve for people in Gaza from Israel’s months-long military campaign that it launched in response to the October 7 Hamas terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and saw more than 250 taken hostage.
At least 48,348 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and another 111,761 people injured, the Ministry of Health there reported on Tuesday.
Survivors say they are struggling to rebuild communities and reconcile the destruction wrought – which gutted the medical system, and spawned a crisis of starvation, displacement and disease. Just 20 out of 35 hospitals are partially functional, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of preventing the entry of humanitarian aid into the strip in violation of the ceasefire agreement – accusations that Israel has denied.
On February 14, COGAT said that 4,200 humanitarian aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip that week, carrying food, fuel, medical supplies, tents and shelter equipment, in compliance with the ceasefire and hostage deal. Since the start of the ceasefire on January 19, 16,800 trucks of aid had entered Gaza, COGAT added.
In Nasser Hospital, a Palestinian mother gently stroked her tiny, pale baby, who was swaddled in blankets. Two-month-old Yousaf Al-Najjar is one of many neonatal patients being treated for hypothermia there.
CNN footage from the hospital on Tuesday showed the mother trying to check the temperature of her baby boy, who she said has become like “a skeleton.” The family is displaced inside a tent nearby, with at least 15 other relatives.
“I put my lips on his face and feet, and they have become frozen,” she told CNN. “Children are being brought in dead from the cold weather.
“We don’t have covers or anything,” she added. “I see death in my son.”
Baby Yousaf was born prematurely, according to Dr. Fida’a Al-Nadi, a pediatrician at Nasser Hospital. His weight of two kilograms has made him more vulnerable to hypothermia, Dr Al-Nadi told CNN.
“Every day we are dealing with children (suffering) hypothermia, many of them die,” she said on Tuesday. “The problem is not the hospital; it’s the conditions where the children are living, either in tents or destroyed homes.”
Israel’s war in Gaza has pushed many Palestinians into tent camps. At least 1.9 million people have been displaced, according to the UN. Many have sought refuge in sprawling outdoor areas, living for months in makeshift tents made of cloth and nylon – with little access to warmth, electricity or heating. In cold weather conditions, newborns and children up to three months are among those most at risk of respiratory infections, lack of blood supply, and infections, Dr Munir Al-Bursh, the director general of the health ministry in the enclave, said on February 19.
Fikr Shalltoot, the Gaza director for the UK-based NGO, Medical Aid for Palestinians, said the deaths of those six Palestinian babies “is the direct result of Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid.”
“Newborns should not be dying of hypothermia in Gaza. This is not a tragedy of nature but a man-made crisis,” Shalltoot said on Tuesday, in a statement shared with CNN. “If adequate aid, including shelter supplies, were allowed to reach civilians and hospitals, these deaths would be entirely preventable.”
