WHO says newborns in Gaza dying because 'too low birth weight'

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) The World Health Organization on Tuesday said the effects of starvation in the Gaza Strip are getting heavier each day as doctors and medical staff are seeing "newborn babies simply dying because they're too low birth weight."

"They're seeing the pregnant women who are coming in also underweight and suffering, the complications that occur if you are trying to carry a pregnancy and you are you lack the nutrition," WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told a UN press briefing in Geneva.

"Increasingly, we're seeing children that are at the point brink of death through starvation that need refeeding and our work now is setting up malnutrition stabilization centers," Harris said.

She added that they already set one up in the South and now they are looking forward to doing the same in the North.

But, she added, to be able to set up such centers they will need to bring the materials in at a scale that is not possible right now "without access and safety."

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than 31,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in the enclave, and nearly 74,000 others injured, besides causing mass destruction and displacement.

Famine is imminent in Gaza, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which says that only sustained access and more supplies will save lives.