Aid agencies claim that the limited amount of aid that Israel authorized to Gaza last week is unlikely to avoid famine experts who have warned for months.
While at the beginning, most of the deaths linked to famine were one of children and infants, more and more, the elderly succumb to the hunger that Israel has imposed on the enclave since March.
On Sunday, six other adults died of malnutrition, bringing the number of adults to die of hunger to Gaza at 82 in the last five weeks, when such deaths have been recorded for the first time.
Eighty-three children were also killed by Israel by the artificial malnutrition he imposed on the enclave since the start of his war.
So how does famine occur? Do we see the whole image?
Here’s what we know.
What is the hunger of death looks like?
“It’s horrible,” said Dr. James Smith, an emergency doctor who volunteered in Gaza.
At first, after being deprived of food for days, the body begins to break down muscles and other fabrics.
“It is one of the most unworthy and barbaric ways to kill. Famine is always something that is done by one person to another. It is intended to be extended and to maximize suffering,” he said.
Soon, the metabolism slows down, the ability to regulate the temperature is lost, the renal function becomes altered and, critically in Gaza, the immune system begins to weaken and the capacity of the body to heal the injury is reduced.
Once the body’s reserves are used, it loses the capacity to channel nutrients to organs and vital tissues. As a result, essential organs like the heart and the lungs become less effective. Muscles decrease and people feel weak.
Finally, as the protein reserves of the body are ravaged, the tissues of the body are broken down, with death not far.
How long does it take for the human body to die of famine?
Although scientific research on the subject has been limited for ethical reasons, it is estimated that an adult generally well nourished and otherwise in good health could survive without food between 45 and 61 days.
However, after 22 months of war, few people in Gaza could be described both nourished or healthy, leaving them sensitive to malnutrition and the many infectious diseases that prevail in the enclave.
“With famine, the body loses the ability to launch an immune response to diseases or injuries it could normally manage, such as gastroenteritis, trauma or respiratory infection, so it is often malnutrition an infection that kills,” continued Dr. Smith.
Who are the people who risk the most hunger to death?
Old, young people, those who are already sick and cruelly, those who are alone.
“A child will die earlier from famine. Loss of muscle and fat occurs almost immediately. Likewise, those of older age groups will also die more quickly,” said Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Palestinian British surgeon who spent 43 days working in Gaza.
“However, it is not only age. There are also social differences,” he continued.
“There are currently thousands of orphans wandering Gaza. There is no one to feed them or risk their lives to get food for them, so they are also more likely to die,” he said.
Who are the people who die of hunger in Gaza?
There is overwhelming evidence that, through the various blockade, Israel imposed on Gaza, the threat of death by famine has spread from the vulnerable to all in Gaza.
In February 2024, five months after the start of the War of Israel against Gaza, the World Health Organization estimated that a child in six under the age of two, especially in northern Gaza – at the time under the Israeli seat – was acute malnutrition.
In August 2025, 82 adults were hungry to death in the last five weeks.
Israel has been limiting Gaza’s food for years. How did it affect people there?
Israel controls the amount of food it has allowed for decades, which suggests that it already knows precisely how much to avoid or cause famine in Gaza.
In 2007, after the Hamas takeover by Hamas of the enclave, Israel instituted its first blockade on the population of Gaza, reducing the aid it allowed to the enclave while giving public insurance that it was not hungry for people.
However, documents discovered after a legal battle between an Israeli NGO and the government confirmed that, between 2007 and 2010, Israel deliberately reduced the food it allowed to Gaza at levels of “minimum subsistence”.
“Generally generally, damage (of malnutrition) is durable,” said Dr. Abu-Sittah, citing the lasting impact of famine on brain function and the prevalence of other conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease in survivors.
Dr. Smith underlined the increased frequency with which malnutric mothers give birth to babies in insufficient insufficiency, whose effects “cascade through generations”.
Can famine in Gaza still be avoided?
It is unlikely.
A little less than a week ago, the integrated classification of the integrated food security phase (IPC) issued its most serious warning: that a famine scenario The worst case was held in Gaza.
However, other observers believe that famine has already arrived in Gaza.
“There are three rigid criteria for a famine to be officially declared,” said Dr. Jones.
The first two: generalized extreme food shortages and high levels of acute malnutrition, had already been affected, he said. The data to confirm the third – the extent of mortality linked to malnutrition – is difficult to confirm, he added.
“Some of the most at risk of dying in malnutrition probably did not have the capacity to join a hospital where deaths are generally recorded,” he said.
“Likewise, while many children in Gaza now show signs of malnutrition, they are also at high risk of being killed by Israeli shells and shots, which will be recorded as their main cause of death.
“However, whatever the term we use to describe the situation, people are always killed by famine in Gaza, as the world looks at,” he said.
“It’s worse than famine. It is the most grotesque spectacle of suffering.”