Gaza’s health crisis has its own dreadful momentum. Even if the shooting ends today and the aid trucks begin to roll, the dying will carry on for some time

‘Famine is unfolding in Gaza today. We should not have to wait until we count the graves of children to speak its name.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

"... We are about to witness most intense famine since World War Two. It won’t be the biggest, because starvation is confined to the 2.2 million residents of the Gaza strip.

Our picture of starvation is a stick thin child wasting away, whose eyes seem swollen as her skin shrinks to her bones. Some children suffer kwashiorkor, a swollen belly that comes with acute malnutrition.

As the body starves its immune system begins to fail. The malnourished fall prey to waterborne infections and suffer diarrhoea, which causes devastating dehydration. Other communicable diseases—which today could include Covid—also ravage communities. The commonest cause of death in a famine is disease, not starvation as such.

‘Starvation’ is defined in international criminal law as depriving people of objects indispensable to survival. That includes not just food but also medicine, clean water, sanitation, shelter, cooking fuel and maternal care for children.

When people are driven from their homes into overcrowded camps, when water supplies are scarce or unclean, when toilets are non-existent or unsanitary, when injuries are left untreated..."   READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/21/we-are-about-to-witness-the-most-intense-famine-since-world-war-ii-in-gaza

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