Serious long-term impacts of Gaza’s malnutrition crisis

Instantly cheerful Fitzpatrick realized that Gaza’s malnutrition crisis was moving to a newer, fatal stage when surgeons from several hospitals still driving on the strip reported that the wounds were no longer closed.

“There are so many traumatic injuries, like blast wounds and fractures,” says Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University. “But they’re not healing because people don’t have the nutrients to make the collagen they need to close them. So even for a month, even two months, they look fresh as if it happened last week.”

According to the Hamaslan Health Ministry in Gaza, malnutrition deaths on the territory since October 2023 have now reached 154, with 89 deaths coming to children. World Health Organization Reported this week That July witnessed a surge in certain deaths. Sixty-three malnutrition-related deaths have been reported at medical facilities. Most of these patients were declared dead upon arrival.

The extent of this crisis is being conveyed to the viewing world through photographs of thin infants with hair removal and infants. Fitzpatrick, who studies starvation and its biological effects, explains that in extreme rarity, the body has a built-in prioritization system designed to maintain the most important organs, heart and brain. After using the main fuel supply of glycogen stored in the liver and muscles, she says the body uses fat for energy, and uses more elastic organs like the liver to extract proteins before breaking down bones, muscles, and if necessary. “Skin and hair were ignored first,” Fitzpatrick says. “It just leaves your hair down. Often it changes colour. Your skin becomes very thin.”

In some cases, severe protein deficiency can cause a condition known as kuwashiolcol or starvation edema. “There are many different types of sharp malnutrition,” says Fitzpatrick. “There’s a thin type, there’s Kwashiorkor. You can see both in Gaza. In babies, you might see it on their faces. Their cheeks are puffy and you say, ‘Oh, they’re fine’ But no, it’s fluid. ”

Much of our understanding of acute malnutrition comes from studies conducted in Holocaust survivorsmajor hunger of the 20th century, etc. Great Chinese Hunger and Ethiopia hunger and anorexia in the 1980s. Marco Kerack, an associate professor of global child health and nutrition at the London School of Hygiene, explains that he explains the body to a progressive rewinding process in which people are malnourished but still medically stable, characterising a much more serious phase characterized by loss of either appetite, rentalgy, apasi or anxiety.

Based on the latest report from Gaza, explaining that one in five children under the age of five are acute malnutrition, Kerak says that more and more people are entering this latter stage. Statistics collected by NGOs show a surge in cases since early June, with over 5,000 cases recognized in four malnutrition treatment centres in Gaza this month, with 6,500 in June. “The youngest children are more vulnerable because their organs are still developing,” Kerack says.