‘Absolutely shocking’ – UN official describes children’s ward at north Gaza hospital
Fadi al-Zant, 6, was evacuated to southern Gaza after facing starvation at the Kamal Adnan Hospital in Gaza City
The Palestine Chronicle reports on 26 March 2024:
A UN official has described the situation in the children’s ward at the Kamal Adwan hospital in north Gaza where at least 15 children have died as a result of starvation, as “absolutely shocking.”
“I went there because that was the hospital that was recording and reporting the deaths of children through nutritional malnutrition issues,” Jamie McGoldrick, the interim UN Coordinator in the Occupied Palestinian Territory told UN News.
He said he went to “the children’s ward, and it’s absolutely shocking to see what’s there.”
“Every single child in that ward has nutritional deficiencies, are emaciated. They’re on drip feeds and some of them are worse off than others,” McGoldrick explained.
“Some of them have complications, such as Hepatitis A or intestinal infections and all of that’s weakening their immune system,” he continued. “And days before we got there, there was some children who died and some of the children in that ward are in very, very bad condition.”
Rafah Warning
At least 15 children have died from dehydration and malnutrition at the hospital, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
McGoldrick, who has been to north Gaza “twice because it’s been so difficult to get there,” visited the hospital “this week.” He warned that “If people are forced to move from Rafah right now and the assumptions are that it will be a large scale incursion … We cannot cope with that.”
Mentioning a figure of up to “900,000 people moving,” he stressed that “There’s nowhere in the world you could cope with that number happening that quickly when we right now are in such a fragile situation in terms of our ability to address the current humanitarian situation.”