Gaza's starving health workers battle to treat malnourished population

Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib arrives at work in Gaza's fractured health system knowing he will likely go hungry. Most days, he and his colleagues eat a single meal—bread paired with canned food or lentils, if the market has anything at all. Some days it doesn't. There are no vegetables, no fruit, no meat. He performs his duties as deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders anyway, treating patients while feeling dizzy and weak, his body running on fumes.

This is the paradox now consuming Gaza's hospitals nearly two years into Israel's war on the territory. The medical staff themselves are starving while they treat a population that is also starving. Doctors faint during surgery. Nurses clean wounds on empty stomachs. Some colleagues have lost weight so rapidly that mothers among them can no longer produce milk to breastfeed their infants. The health system, already shattered by airstrikes and military assault, is collapsing under the weight of a hunger crisis that has engulfed both caregiver and patient alike.

When Israel launched its campaign in October 2023, Gaza's 36 hospitals became both refuge and target. Casualties flooded in; airstrikes followed. The WHO has documented at least 700 attacks on health care facilities. Gaza's Health Ministry reports that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,500 Palestinian health workers since the war began. Today, only 18 hospitals remain partially operational. Less than 40 percent of primary health care facilities are still functional. All remaining facilities are damaged and packed far beyond capacity.

Then came the blockade. In March, Israel imposed a complete 11-week closure on Gaza, strangling the flow of medicines, equipment, and food. The main UN agency distributing aid was forced to stop operating and was replaced by a US- and Israeli-run foundation. Supplies have resumed, but at a fraction of what aid organizations say is needed. Dr. Saeed Salah, medical director of the Patient's Friends Benevolent Society Hospital in northern Gaza, calls the food shortage the greatest crisis his staff and patients have faced. Some of his medical workers are themselves malnourished, unable to sustain the energy their duties demand. His emergency ward overflows with people who haven't eaten for days, requiring IV fluids just to survive. In over 21 months of operating under crisis, he said, they have never seen days like these.

The human toll is now visible in the numbers. Gaza's Health Ministry reports that 263 Palestinians have died from malnutrition and starvation since October 2023, including 112 children. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global food security analysis platform, warned last month that the worst-case scenario of famine is unfolding in Gaza, with widespread death certain without immediate intervention. Two of three famine thresholds have already been reached. In July alone, the WHO recorded 13,500 injuries in Gaza—the highest monthly total since the first three months of the war—many occurring when Israeli troops opened fire on crowds waiting to collect food from distribution points.

Rowida Sabbah, a nutrition program lead for Medical Aid for Palestinians in southern Gaza, recently encountered a mother and her two children, aged 5 and 7, who had eaten no bread for two months. For two days, the mother had given them only water. When she finally reached a medical hub for help, she wept receiving supplies. Sabbah describes seeing children begging for anything—even just bread with a pinch of salt. Each case breaks her heart as she watches them waste away.

Israeli officials have disputed these accounts. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed reports of severe hunger as Hamas lies and insisted there is no policy of starvation. Yet the doctors working inside Gaza's hospitals describe a different reality. They see the surge in severe malnutrition cases. They watch their own colleagues grow weaker. Summer Al-Jamal, a finance and administration assistant at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, visited the facility recently and found the medical staff exhausted, physically and emotionally. Many appeared pale, fatigued, and undernourished. The toll of recent weeks had left them drained.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, has called for large-scale aid—diverse and nutritious food delivered via all routes. No one can sustain this pace, he said, yet health workers keep showing up because patients have no one else. Last week, more than 100 health workers from around the world who have worked in Gaza during the conflict signed a letter expressing solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues, describing them as starved and shot, victims of what they called a methodical attack on the health system. Many are surviving on less than a single serving of rice a day, the letter stated, while performing operations and triaging patients in emergency rooms.

With little sign of a ceasefire and Israel ramping up military operations around Gaza City, doctors are bracing for conditions to worsen. Dr. Salah, at the northern hospital, points to immediate crises: a severe shortage of therapeutic infant formula, dehydrated mothers unable to breastfeed, pregnant women suffering complications and at increased risk of miscarriage. Malnourished patients are deteriorating. Without urgent intervention, he said, more lives will be lost. The question now is whether the world will act before that happens.