Newborn babies dying in Gaza as Israeli blockade causes dire shortage of formula

ITV News

3 days ago

At first the sounds are oddly comforting.
The regular beep and hum of the intensive care unit for newborn babies.
Life support systems - working as they should.
But this is Gaza, and nothing is normal.
Every life seems to hang by a thread.
Off camera, a doctor tells us; "Some of these babies will be with us until they die."
Nasser hospital only has 48 hours' worth of formula supply, Dr Adil Husain tells ITV News
Nasser Hospital still functions, though it's been at the centre of Israel's war with Hamas for 20 traumatising months.
Right now, we're told, these tiny patients' most basic need is their great weakness.
The Israeli aid blockage means there's a dire shortage of formula feed that could prove fatal.
Dr Adil Husain stands by the refrigerator where the babies' bottles are kept cool.
He says they have enough for forty-eight hours.
ITV News – and other foreign media – aren't permitted by the Israeli government to report independently from Gaza.
But a group of volunteer doctors from the NGO Rahma have shared with us video diaries from the past two weeks.
Too often, they are records of despair.
Hasan is a three-year-old who weighs the same as a three-month-old.
It's painful to look at his emaciated frame, yet impossible to look away.
Our report details more of his story. Sadly, it is by no means unique.
The doctors are veterans of civilian medicine, but none have worked on Gaza's front line before.
Dr Goher Rahbour, a British surgeon with Medical Aid for Palestine, pays tribute to the bravery and skill of his Palestinian colleagues, but is clearly frustrated by the lack of modern – or even functioning - equipment he has to work with.
The doctors' film blood-soaked scenes in the emergency rooms after what we are told is yet another mass shooting at one of the controversial US-Israeli aid stations.
The UN says more than 400 Palestinians have been killed since they opened.
Israel's military insists it does not target civilians, yet ITV News has already documented crowds of hungry Gazans fleeing under gunfire.
The aftermath of the incident the doctors documented, took place last weekend.
There are children, we're told, who were shot while they waited for food – a teenage girl apparently shot in the back; another young man with life-changing head wounds.
A boy of around fifteen seems close to death with catastrophic injuries.
Many of the scenes are too disturbing to broadcast.
"There is blood upon blood," says Dr Adil Husain. "We are exhausted."
He wonders, as does the world, how long this can continue.
The ceasefire between Israel and Iran has raised some optimism that an end might be found to the conflict in Gaza that has cost more than 50,000 lives.
But even if it comes soon – and hopes in the past have all been quickly dashed – for some of the children of Nasser Hospital, it's already too late.