Severe Food Shortages Plague Gaza Hospitals Amid Aid Blockade

Hospitals still operating in Gaza are witnessing alarming scenes as nurses frequently collapse from hunger and dehydration. Hospital administrators are struggling to provide adequate meals for both patients and medical personnel. Critical shortages of infant formula have forced doctors in some cases to feed newborns only water.

Three major hospitals in the territory currently lack the essential nutritional fluids required to treat severely malnourished children and adults effectively.

These conditions were detailed through interviews conducted with seven doctors—four local Gaza physicians and three international volunteers from Australia, Britain, and the United States—who have been working in four of Gaza’s principal hospitals over the past week.

Following months of restricted humanitarian aid, medical experts and agencies warn that starvation is rapidly spreading throughout Gaza. Recent figures from the Gaza Health Ministry reveal that at least 56 Palestinians succumbed to starvation this month alone, representing nearly half of all such deaths since the conflict began 22 months ago.

As hunger escalates, healthcare facilities and workers—already burdened with treating war injuries and illnesses—face an increasing number of malnutrition cases.

Medical staff, weakened and dizzy from lack of food and fluids, are frequently fainting in hospital wards and require revival through saline and glucose infusions. Alongside chronic shortages of basic medicines like antibiotics and painkillers, doctors are running dangerously low on specialized intravenous nutrients necessary for sustaining critically depleted patients.