What Happens When There Is No Food: Experts Say Severe Malnutrition Could Set in Swiftly in Gaza
The director of the United States Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, said this week that a famine is underway in northern Gaza, which has been devastated by six months of Israeli military operations and is the part of the territory most cut off from humanitarian assistance.
Ms. Power referred to the work of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, a group of U.N. agencies and relief agencies which tracks acute food shortages, and which said in March that “famine is imminent” in Gaza.
Even before the war between Israel and Hamas, nearly 70 percent of Gazans were dependent on humanitarian assistance for food because the territory has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007. Nevertheless, malnutrition was rare, Ms. Power said in congressional testimony; that has changed swiftly with the war.
“In northern Gaza, the rate of malnutrition prior to Oct. 7 was almost zero, and it is now one in three kids,” she said. She added: “In terms of actual severe acute malnutrition for under-5s, that rate was 16 percent in January and became 30 percent in February. We’re awaiting the March numbers, but we expect it to continue.”
The onset of the nutrition crisis in Gaza has been swift, but it has followed a path familiar to experts.
Children often fail first
Children, pregnant and lactating women, people with medical conditions and older adults typically succumb first to acute malnutrition. How long they can survive under conditions of extreme hunger will vary.