The World Health Organization has warned that people in Gaza are selling their possessions to obtain food, at a time when the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has confirmed that more than 80% of children in the Strip “suffer from acute food poverty.”
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a blog post on his account on the social networking site “X” that there is “hunger and famine” in Gaza.
He pointed out that people are facing hunger and selling their belongings in exchange for food, adding, “Fathers and mothers go hungry so that their children can eat, and this situation is disastrous for the health of people in the Gaza Strip.”
Ghebreyesus stressed that the long-standing conflict has prevented access to needed food and other life-saving humanitarian assistance.
For its part, UNICEF said in a statement that its estimates indicate that in the coming weeks at least 10,000 children under the age of five will suffer from malnutrition that will threaten their lives. She added that more than 80% of children in Gaza suffer from severe food poverty.
She stated, “These results indicate that all children under five in the Gaza Strip – numbering 335,000 children – are at high risk of acute malnutrition and death, which could have been prevented had it not been for the continued increasing risk of famine.”
While UNICEF considered this “risk unacceptable” and that it comes at a time when the food and health systems in the Gaza Strip are witnessing a complete collapse, Ghebreyesus stressed the call of the World Health Organization and its partners to urgently improve food security by accelerating the flow of aid to Gaza to stop famine and restore services. Such as health, clean water, sanitation and general hygiene.
Many United Nations agencies have warned of the threat of famine looming over Gaza, as a result of the tragic conditions facing its residents in light of Israel continuing its war on the Strip for the third month and obstructing the entry of international humanitarian aid.
