As a medical aid worker, I’ve never seen suffering like Gaza. It must end

As a medical doctor, humanitarian aid worker, and mother, I have spent the past two decades responding to crises in Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and beyond.

I have treated children clinging to life from preventable illnesses, supported traumatised women through childbirth in war zones, and witnessed the devastating human toll of blockades, bombings, and bureaucratic cruelty.

Despite all this suffering, nothing compares to what we are witnessing amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Today, the Gaza Strip is collapsing under the weight of a man-made famine, with women and children bearing the brunt of what UN experts have called “intentional” and “politically motivated starvation” – not caused by disaster, but by design.

In all my years of fieldwork, I have never seen such a systematic assault on maternal and child health.

This is not a humanitarian crisis in the abstract. It is the intentional denial of food, water, and medicine to an entire civilian population – an atrocity unfolding in full view of the world.

Deliberate starvation

Humanitarian agencies like my own, Action For Humanity, are being routinely denied access to Gaza.

Meanwhile, the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” – a sham organisation – is being weaponised: at best for political gain, at worst to deepen the suffering of Palestinians.

These babies – some weighing less than 1.5kg – are not dying from lack of love, but from lack of calories

Food, fuel, medical supplies, and even infant formula are being withheld.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 71,000 children under five and nearly 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition.

UN Women estimates that over 557,000 women are facing severe food insecurity.

In the neonatal units of Khan Younis and Rafah, premature babies cling to life on dwindling drops of depleted formula.

Staff at Nasser Hospital have warned that the last cans of specialised medical-grade formula have run out. These babies – some weighing less than 1.5kg – are not dying from lack of love, but from lack of calories.

Malnourished mothers cannot produce breast milk. Infants like six-month-old Lina*, born underweight and reliant on formula, are now starving as supplies are exhausted.

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Her mother, gaunt and anaemic, cannot breastfeed. The few tins they had were rationed to last a month, but were gone within days.

Women are giving birth in tents, among rubble, in overcrowded clinics with no anaesthesia, no antibiotics, and no hygiene supplies.

Caesarean sections are being performed without proper pain relief. I have heard directly from women like Rania*, who delivered her baby alone, lay in agony without water, and was discharged within hours – bleeding and broken as she cradled her newborn.

Weaponised aid

These are not isolated tragedies. They are the norm in Gaza today.

Health workers are witnessing a public health catastrophe in real time, unable to act – their hands tied by the destruction of the healthcare system and the deliberate obstruction of aid.

This is not a failure of logistics. It is a policy goal. A crime. A crime against humanity.

International humanitarian law is clear: starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime.

Human Rights Watch reported in April 2024 that children in Gaza had already begun dying from starvation-related causes. The following month, in May 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to ensure unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza. These orders have been flagrantly ignored.

This is not only morally indefensible. It is criminal.

As a doctor, I have seen the slow wasting of a malnourished child. I have watched a mother’s eyes glaze over as her baby fails to cry for lack of energy.

I have held dying children in my arms. It is unspeakably tragic when it is a single case. But this is now the norm in Gaza – and the world is watching in silence.

As human rights, international law, and the most basic principles of human dignity are violated every minute of every day in Gaza, we must once again call for the immediate resumption of humanitarian corridors to enable the safe, sustained delivery of food, fuel, infant formula, and medical supplies.

There is also an urgent need to establish emergency maternity and neonatal care zones – staffed and supplied to provide safe childbirth and life-saving care for newborns.

Urgent action

Governments have a moral obligation to fund and operationalise emergency maternal and infant nutrition programmes via OCHA, Unrwa, and humanitarian NGOs, to scale up treatment for acute malnutrition and distribute essential formula.

We do not need new international laws to prevent what is happening. It is already clearly illegal. What is needed is enforcement.

The international community must ensure compliance with ICJ rulings through pressure, legal mechanisms, and arms embargoes

The international community must ensure compliance with ICJ rulings – through diplomatic pressure, legal mechanisms, and the suspension of arms transfers.

Failure to act now will endanger not only Gaza’s children, but the child victims of all future wars.

Allowing Israel to unleash wholesale violations of the laws of war sets a deadly precedent that will cost lives for years to come, far beyond Gaza’s borders.

This is a medical emergency. This is a humanitarian emergency. This is a moral emergency. And this crisis demands a response commensurate with its horror.

As a humanitarian, I call for urgent action. As a doctor, I call for triage on a population level. And as a mother, I ask: how can we accept this?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.