Photo: Activestills
On Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the leading global authority on food insecurity, issued its most alarming report yet on Gaza, concluding that famine is already taking place in Gaza City and is expected to spread to the southern Strip in the coming weeks.
This catastrophe began to unfold months ago and was entirely predictable. Gaza’s health system has been dismantled, its people left vulnerable, sick, injured, and repeatedly displaced. Water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure have been destroyed, border crossings sealed or severely restricted, and experts warned again and again of the inevitable outcome. Now, the disaster they predicted has materialized.
The spike in malnutrition among children in the Gaza Strip continues, with some now suffering acute, life-threatening hunger. Physicians have also reported rare medical complications linked to malnourishment, including Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS) and transverse myelitis, a severe neurological disorder caused by spinal cord inflammation.
The collapse of Gaza’s health system and the breakdown of essential services – water, sanitation, shelter—have created a vicious cycle where infectious diseases and malnutrition reinforce each other. The few hospitals that remain functional are unequipped to meet the population’s urgent needs, particularly those of thousands of children and pregnant or breastfeeding women requiring advanced care.
Food aid alone cannot resolve this crisis. What is urgently needed is the expansion of emergency medical services, the restoration of essential infrastructure, and an immediate end to attacks on healthcare facilities and personnel. Above all, an unrestricted humanitarian lifeline must be opened between Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem to ensure the evacuation of all critically ill patients.
The medical community – especially within Israel – cannot remain silent in the face of a crisis of this magnitude. Physicians and healthcare professionals have a duty to speak out, clearly and unequivocally, against the unfolding genocide in Gaza.
