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6/5/2025–|Last update: 6/5/202501:04 AM (Mecca time)
On Monday, the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip launched an international campaign of solidarity with children in the Strip, in light of a catastrophic deterioration in the humanitarian and health conditions as a result of the continued Israeli genocide and the complete closure of the crossings.
The ministry said, during a press conference in Gaza City, that the restrictions imposed on the entry of food and medicine for more than two months, in addition to the continued bombing, have exacerbated the suffering of children who constitute a large percentage of the victims of the Israeli genocide war.
According to the Ministry’s data, 16,278 children were killed since October 20, 2023, at the rate of one child every 40 minutes. It also reported the martyrdom of 311 infants born during the war period.
The ministry indicated that the destruction of a large number of primary care centers, and the restrictions imposed on the entry of medicines, nutritional supplements and vitamins, are two things that they left pregnant women and children below the minimum health care, explaining that 51% of the mother and child health requirements are not available.
The ministry warned of preventive diseases such as polio, as a result of preventing the entry of basic vaccines, considering that the situation warns of the collapse of previous efforts in the field of public health.
Health authorities also recorded 57 deaths for children due to acute malnutrition and associated health complications, while air strikes caused aid distribution centers, according to the ministry, in the killing of a number of children while trying to obtain food.
The Gaza Strip has been under a tight siege for more than 17 years, but the restrictions have escalated greatly since last March, as Israel closed almost all the crossings leading to the Strip, including the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, in the wake of the collapse of a partial calm agreement.
The risk of starvation
UN organizations say that most of the sector’s residents, who number more than two million people, are facing the risk of starvation, with a sharp decline in the ability to obtain clean drinking water, the collapse of sewage, electricity and health care services.
In a recent report, the “Save the Children” organization said that Gaza children are going through “one of the worst crises in the century,” stressing that the psychological and physical effects on the emerging generation will be long -term unless it takes immediate move.
At the conclusion of its conference, the Ministry of Health called on the international community, humanitarian institutions, media professionals and activists around the world to support the “global campaign to save the children of Gaza”, calling for an urgent move to stop the war and ensure that aid is entering without political conditions.
