杏MAP导航

By Stefano Leszczinsky and Linda Bordoni

"Here's how starvation destroys your body: in the first 6 to 24 hours, blood sugar drops. The body burns stored glycogen to stay alive.  In 1 to 3 days, there is no more glycogen and fat is turned into ketones to fuel your brain. The body enters "survival mode" and in the next 3 to 5 days, the muscles start breaking down and the body sacrifices its own tissue - even the heart - just to survive. This is when children stop crying.“

Dr Mohammed Abu Mughaisib’s video of himself describing how hunger destroys life, dignity and humanity provides a dramatic testimony of the reality in the Gaza Strip, where food and medicine are blocked and the population is dying of starvation.

"I never thought I would experience it firsthand, like I'm doing now", the Médecins Sans Frontières Deputy Medical Coordinator in Gaza continues, explaining that for the past month he has been surviving on one meal per day, and in the past week on “only one meal every two days. Not because I cannot afford it, but because there is nothing to buy, and the markets are completely empty."

Other doctors, medics and ambulance drivers who are starting to starve are also trying to care for starving patients, he says, noting they are expected “to save lives while our own lives are slowly being consumed."

This is not just about hunger

"This is not just about hunger, but about the slow destruction of life, dignity and humanity," he says, appealing for a stop to the use of food, water and aid as "a weapon in this war."

"It is not acceptable at all."

Children, pregnant and breastfeeding women the first victims

While, hundreds of people seeking desperately needed aid continue to be attacked by Israeli forces and private security contractors at food distribution sites run by the Israeli supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), At the MSF clinic in Gaza City, the number of people treated for malnutrition has quadrupled since 18 May, while rates of severe malnutrition in children under five have tripled in the last two weeks alone.

Caroline Willemen, project coordinator at the clinic, says 25 per cent of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women are severely malnourished, and the numbers are rising.

“We are now enrolling 25 new patients every single day for malnutrition. We see the exhaustion and the hunger in our own colleagues,” she says, and the consequences of this dramatic reality are far-reaching as those tasked with providing aid and support are increasingly unable to work.

This is a deliberate choice, she adds: "The few who attempt to look for food are fired upon."