The World Health Organization said Sunday there have been 63 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza this month, including 24 children under the age of 5 — up from 11 deaths total the previous six months of the year.
Gaza’s Health Ministry puts the number even higher, reporting 82 deaths this month of malnutrition-related causes: 24 children and 58 adults. It said Monday that 14 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours. The ministry, which operates under the Hamas government, is headed by medical professionals and is seen by the U.N. as the most reliable source of data on casualties. U.N. agencies also often confirm numbers through other partners on the ground.
The Patient’s Friends Hospital, the main emergency center for malnourished kids in northern Gaza, says this month it saw for the first time malnutrition deaths in children who had no preexisting conditions. Some adults who died suffered from such illnesses as diabetes or had heart or kidney ailments made worse by starvation, according to Gaza medical officials.
The WHO also says acute malnutrition in northern Gaza tripled this month, reaching nearly one in five children under 5 years old, and has doubled in central and southern Gaza. The U.N. says Gaza’s only four specialized treatment centers for malnutrition are “overwhelmed.”
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World Jul 28, 2025 5:17 PM EDT
SUMMERS: So tell us, if you can, what are families, people there in Gaza, able to eat now?
TANIS: Fundamentally, food is not available for the more than 2 million Palestinians there. There’s a very small supply of local vegetables, like some eggplant, zucchini, rarely maybe onion or garlic. Now, before things got so bad, people could at least eat bread. Now, flour is very expensive, and there’s not enough of it. So even if you have money, you can’t buy food.
And it’s not just food, though, because there’s a serious shortage of fuel and water for cooking and drinking. And the IPC report said today that nearly 9 out of 10 families in Gaza have to resort to extreme coping measures. I asked Beckie Ryan with the aid group CARE – she’s in Gaza right now – to tell us what she’s hearing from mothers who come to their clinic.
BECKIE RYAN: Some of the coping mechanisms they’ve had to resort to is choosing which child, you know, will be fed that day. You know, are they going to buy supplies for the baby, or are they going to buy something that the 5-year-old can eat?
TANIS: Aid workers also told me they’re seeing children rummaging through garbage daily, but not finding any food.
NPR
Famine is unfolding in Gaza, an alert from UN-backed food security experts confirms