In January, a woman in Gaza named Mashael was pregnant with her first child when an Israeli airstrike hit her home, burying her and her husband under rubble for several days, a UNICEF official recounted to Jezebel. While under the rubble, Mashael’s baby stopped moving; a month later, she learned she’d miscarried while waiting for medical care at the overcrowded, under-resourced Emirati maternity hospital in Rafah.
Ingram called UNRWA “indispensable” to Palestinians in Gaza, including pregnant women and new mothers already struggling with malnourishment, infection, and disease amid Israel’s ongoing blockade. According to Ingram, 135,000 children under two years old are already “at risk of severe malnutrition.” That’s because baby formula is inaccessible, and starving and malnourished mothers are unable to nurse. Over the weekend, aon a date because their mother can’t produce breast milk.
“I feel helpless. I don’t have diapers for my four-month-old baby, and I cannot wash his clothes,” Farah wrote. “In the past four months, some of my friends had their babies without anesthesia,, and others had to give birth in shelters on dirty, cold floors, only aided by their mothers or other elderly women.”the U.S. will send aid to Gaza through other agencies, like the U.N.