The dangerous effects in the long term of the malnutrition crisis in Gaza

Fun moment Fitzpatrick realized that the malnutrition crisis in Gaza had advanced to a newer and more deadly stage when surgeons in the few hospitals, which are still working on the tape, were no longer closed.

“There are a lot of painful injuries, such as explosion wounds and broken bones,” says Fitzpatrick, Assistant Professor at Friedmann Nutrition College at Tafs University. “But they do not heal, because people do not have the nutrients to build collagen needed to close them. So the wounds of a month, up to two months, still seem new as if they had happened last week.”

According to the Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza, the death of malnutrition in the region since October 2023 has now reached 154, with 89 of the upcoming deaths in children. Global Health Organization I mentioned this week In July, July witnessed a certain increase in deaths, as 63 deaths related to malnutrition were reported in health facilities, including 38 adults, one child over five, and 24 children under the age of five. Most of these patients were announced upon their arrival.

The extent of this crisis has been transferred to the world of viewing through pictures of comic and gentle infants. Fitzpatrick, which studies hunger and its biological effects, explains that in severe scarcity conditions, the body has a system of prioritization in its fold factors, designed to maintain most vital organs, heart and brain, to the end. After using the initial fuel supplies – glycogen stored in the liver and muscles – it says that the body uses fat for energy, before bone and muscles decomposition, then if necessary, the more flexible organs like the liver in order to extract protein. “The skin and hair are the first to be neglected,” says Fitzpatrick. “The hair will fall. Often the color will change. The skin becomes very thin.”

In some cases, acute protein deficiency can cause a condition known as kwashiorkor, or famine edema, which is characterized by swelling due to the liquid of transition to body tissues, especially in the abdomen. “There are different types of acute malnutrition,” says Fitzpatrick. “There is a thin type and there is kwashiorkor, and we both see in Gaza. In children, you may see them in their faces. Their cheeks blow up and you love,” Oh, they are fine. “But no, this is a liquid.”

Many of our understanding of acute malnutrition comes from the studies conducted on Holocaust survivorsThe main famines in the twentieth century such as Great Chinese famine Ethiopian famine in the eighties, and loss of appetite. Marco Kerac, associate professor of children’s health and global nutrition at the London College of Health and Equatorial Medicine, describes that the body is in a gradual final process as people are exposed to malnutrition, but they are still medical stable, before entering a more dangerous stage characterized by loss of appetite, vitality, supply or anxiety.

Based on the latest reports from Gaza, with the description of the World Health Organization, which describes almost one in five children under the age of five who have been subjected to acute malnutrition, Kirak says more and more people enter this last stage. Statistics gathered by NGOs, the Global Nutrition Group shows an increase in cases since early June, when more than 5,000 under alcohol has been accepted in the four malnutrition treatment centers in Gaza this month and 6500 in June. “Young children are more likely because their organs are still developing,” says Kirac.