A warning that some of the images in this report may be disturbing.
A growing number of aid agencies, United Nations bodies, charities and activists are urging Israel to allow food and humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Israel's man-made famine is tightening its grip. For some families, it's too late. Mothers are watching their children die - unable to do anything to stop it. May Abu Arar is just one of an increasing number of young Palestinians suffering from malnutrition. She is seven years old and has been losing weight for four months.
Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Al-Khalili reports from Gaza City, Palestine.
Liz Allcock is the head of protection at Medical Aid for Palestinians. She says the famine declared in Gaza this week by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) only confirms what aid workers have been witnessing for months
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00:00These are the cries of a child on the brink of death, bones and skin.
00:08That's all that's left of May Abu Arar, who's suffering from severe malnutrition.
00:16May is seven years old, but she's so weak she has to be fed through a syringe.
00:24Every sip is painful. Her mother says these liquid meals aren't working.
00:34She's been suffering from malnutrition for four months now.
00:37She used to weigh 19 kilograms and then it started decreasing.
00:41There's such a shortage of protein every day. My daughter has been getting worse and worse.
00:47When May's condition began to deteriorate, her weight loss was followed by seizures.
00:52Her mother says May had never spent a night in hospital before.
01:01The doctors told me that she isn't suffering from any disease or from any past conditions.
01:06They're saying it's all due to malnutrition and I haven't seen improvement in her situation at all.
01:11Malnutrition has turned May from a lively child who cared for her baby sister into a fragile skeletal girl struggling to survive.
01:23Unfortunately, the occupation is preventing the entry of vital medicines into the Gaza Strip.
01:31Potassium chloride is the easiest medication that any doctor can prescribe. We don't even have that.
01:39We have babies die because we don't have it. Sometimes supplies come in, but unfortunately very little.
01:47We're shocked that some medication that does get in, we don't even need.
01:51May is one of thousands of children here suffering from malnutrition. And for their suffering to end,
01:59Israel needs to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza. And until that happens,
02:05more and more children will end up in hospitals like this, close to death.
02:10Raim Khalili, Al Jazeera, Gaza City, Palestine.
02:15Liz Alcock is the head of protection and medical aid for Palestinians. She's joining us from Deir al-Bala in central Gaza.
02:20Thanks very much indeed for being with us. Now, you were with us about a month ago. Can you describe to us what has changed in that month?
02:30Good morning and thank you for having me. The situation has deteriorated as it has spiraled over the last 22 months.
02:38The stark difference really is the number of infants, newborns, young children who we are seeing in medical facilities clinging onto the edge of life as a result of malnutrition
02:50and being born with birth injuries because of pregnant women not getting the supplements and the nutritional support that they need during their pregnancies.
03:01So this situation means that the hospitals, the paediatric intensive care units, the neonatal units are now backed up with children with severe life-threatening malnutrition,
03:14meaning that the space for new injuries, people who are coming in with serious life-threatening injuries as a result of bombardment, of shooting, of shelling, of drone attacks,
03:27and there's no space to treat people. So you have, you know, on the one hand, massive overcrowding in emergency rooms,
03:35whereby you have people being treated like on the floor. In other instances, you will have a child with malnutrition in a bed,
03:42you will have three other children on the floor nearby with injuries, and in many cases, a dead body nearby because the morgue is full.
03:51And there is just no space to be able to treat people with any kind of safety or dignity. I think this is the situation,
03:58certainly in the medical facilities, that has just inspired us to be on the catastrophic levels.
04:03The United Nations is confirming there is no famine in Gaza. There is speculation that it is likely to spread across the rest of the strip.
04:12Israel's foreign ministry, however, has condemned that report as being based on what it calls Hamas lies.
04:18I just want to check, how does what you and your teams on the ground are seeing compared to what is in the UN report?
04:29The UN report, which is an independent body of experts, and it's extremely rigorous, so it provides extremely hard evidence.
04:41Many of us were expecting this declaration of famine to have come a long time ago because of what we see on the ground,
04:49but because of the thoroughness of the evidence base that's required to make this take has, you know, taken a while.
04:56Therefore, it comes as no surprise at all. If anything, it's quite late.
05:01But what we see on the ground in terms of the scene that I've just described to you, I mean, it plays out across the entirety of the Gaza Strip on an absolutely daily basis.
05:15It's not only, you know, children, small children, you know, the images that you see with the swollen bellies and the skin and bone arms.
05:22It's also elderly people who are unable to get access to any kind of food.
05:29It's also health care staff, aid workers who are fainting on the job because they don't have enough food or sustenance to keep them going.
05:36So, I mean, the Israeli ministry can and do say whatever they like.
05:42I think the media perhaps should ask them for evidence to the contrary of what is being said by every national and local aid agency and the UN panel of experts on this.
05:53Yes, if I understand it correctly, the Israeli government hasn't yet supplied any evidence to back up the allegations that it has been making.
06:02Those questions are being asked.
06:03You mentioned about the level of injuries that are coming into the medical facilities in Gaza and the impact that the famine and starvation is having on that.
06:14The Israeli military we've been talking about has been intensifying its attacks on Gaza City.
06:19Just talk to us what your anticipation of the impact of that is likely to be and what you're seeing.
06:24At the moment, it's about a thousand people per day of those who are being recorded of having shifted from the north to the south, fleeing under a threat of annihilation.
06:44Nobody is choosing to be displaced, of course, but are their lives at the anticipation of further bombardment.
06:51But keep in mind that while we don't have ground troops in certain areas of Gaza City, there is aerial and sea bombardment constantly, not only in Gaza City, across the entirety of the Gaza Strip, all the time.
07:04This isn't let up at all, but the intensity is increasing in Gaza City itself.
07:09And we're also seeing that people's belongings, their homes, their tents, any little scrap of land or property that they may have is being destroyed.
07:23So when, for example, we treat children with traumatic brain injury from being, you know, having a bullet lodged in the back of their head or in their spine,
07:32they are being discharged to nothing and to nowhere.
07:36So because of the scale of the injuries that are coming into hospitals, you know, you have to treat people and you have to discharge them to make room for the next and the next and the next.
07:46And so frequently we are able to do what we can, but with the sad and horrific knowledge that a lot of these kids are going to die upon discharge because they're being discharged into the street,
08:00because the Israelis have destroyed everything to make kind of meaningful recovery.
08:06We're seeing that people are forced now to make an impossible choice, and that is to remain in Gaza in what may remain of their home or make this decision to flee to such uncertainty into an area of,
08:23you know, 13, less than 13 percent of the territory of Gaza, which is already massively overcrowded and that doesn't have the resources to support a vast influx of people.
08:34It doesn't have the resources to support the existing population in areas like Darabal and Khan Yunus, which are supposedly safe, but of course aren't.
08:43So you can imagine 100,000 people coming to a place with massive overcrowding, no sanitation services, extremely limited water resources, no electricity, destroyed roads, destroyed infrastructure, no schools, overcrowded hospitals.
09:00It's an impossible situation.
09:02Many colleagues of mine are saying, I won't move.
09:05What am I moving to?
09:07This is not a choice anybody should have to make, and it's not really voluntary when you're being forced at gunpoint.
09:14Liz Al-Kargas from Medical Aid for Palestinians.
09:16She's been talking to us from Darabal.
09:18Thank you very much indeed for your time.
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