The humanitarian organization United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has reported that “1 in every 5 children is malnourished in Gaza City” and cases continue to “increase every day.”
In a post to the social media platform X, Commissioner General of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini wrote that “when child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food and care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold.”
As “more than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger,” UNRWA is urging “humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza.”
Lazzarini said the people in Gaza are “neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.” He added that the children are “emaciated, weak, and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.”
“Parents are too hungry to care for their children” and “families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive,” he said. Lazzarini detailed that “those who reach UNRWA clinics don’t have the energy, food, or means to follow medical advice.”
“This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave,” Lazzarini wrote. Frontline health workers “are surviving on one small meal a day … if at all. Since they “cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing.”
Read more: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/265567/escalating-child-famine-in-gaza-un-church-leaders-plead-for-urgent-aid-access
By Tessa Gervasini | catholicnewsagency
