Gazan babies die of cold when temperatures drop in winter

Sila was less than three weeks old when her mother Nariman realized she wasn’t moving.

“I woke up in the morning and told my husband that the baby had not moved for some time. He opened her face and found that she was blue, had bitten her tongue and was bleeding,” says Nariman al-Najmeh.

In their tent on a beach in southern Gaza, Nariman sits with her husband, Mahmoud Fasih, and their two young children, Rayan, who is four, and Nihad, who is two and a half.

The family says they were relocated more than 10 times during the 14-month war.

“My husband is a fisherman, we’re from the north and we’re left with nothing, but we did it for our children,” Nariman says in an interview with a freelance cameraman working with the BBC. Israel prevents international media from entering and working freely on the ground in Gaza.

“When I was pregnant, I thought about how I would buy clothes for the baby. I was very worried because my husband doesn’t have a job.”

For 20 days, Seal’s home was a small and overcrowded campsite in the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone,” where the Israeli military ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from other parts of the territory to move.

The area suffers from poor infrastructure and sanitation, as well as flooding caused by both rain and waves from the Mediterranean Sea.

“The cold is fierce and cruel. All night long, because of the cold, we huddle together, curling up into a ball,” says Sila’s father Mahmud.

“Our life is hell. It’s hell because of the consequences of the war, my family died and our situation is unbearable.”

Despite orders for civilians to head to the area, the Israeli military has repeatedly struck al-Mawasi during its campaign against Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.

The death of the Force was not a result of the bombing, but was nevertheless caused by the harsh conditions that war imposes on civilians.

She is one of six newborns who have died of hypothermia in two weeks in Gaza – where overnight temperatures fell to 7C (45F) – according to local health authorities, who also said many thousands of tents had been destroyed by the weather. eat

Nariman says Sila was born in a British field hospital set up in the Khan Yunis area.

“After I gave birth… I started thinking about how to provide her with milk and diapers. Everything that was obtained was obtained with great difficulty.”

“I never thought that I would give birth while living in a tent, in such cold and freezing conditions, with water dripping on us. Water seeps into the tent, pouring over us. Sometimes we had to run to save ourselves from the water – for the sake of the child,” says Nariman.

Nevertheless, the Force was born without complications.

“She was in good health, thank God. Suddenly she started suffering from cold,” says Nariman. “I noticed that she was sneezing and seemed to be sick from the cold, but I never expected her to die because of it.”

Sila was admitted last Wednesday to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where Dr. Ahmad al-Fara, director of the pediatric department, said she suffered from “severe hypothermia that led to the cessation of vital functions, cardiac arrest and ultimately after all, death”. .

“(The day before) two cases were also delivered, one was a three-day-old baby and the other was less than a month old. Both cases involved severe hypothermia that resulted in death,” says Dr. Farah.

Babies do not have a sufficiently developed mechanism to maintain their own body temperature, and hypothermia can easily develop in a cold environment. Premature babies are particularly vulnerable, and Dr Farah says doctors in Gaza have seen an increase in premature births during the war.

Mothers also suffer from malnutrition, as a result of which they are unable to breastfeed their children. According to Dr. Farah, there is also a shortage of infant formula due to limited humanitarian aid supplies.

Then on Sunday another, tragic incident.

Outside Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, a second local BBC cameraman met Yehia al-Batran, who could not contain his agony as he carried his dead son, Jumaa. Like Silah, he too was only 20 days old and blue from the cold.

“Touch him with your hand, he is frozen,” Yehia said. “There are eight of us, we don’t have four blankets. What can I do? I see my children dying before my eyes.”

“These preventable deaths highlight the desperate and worsening conditions facing families and children across Gaza,” UNICEF Regional Director Eduard Beigbeder said on Thursday.

“As temperatures continue to drop in the coming days, it is tragically foreseeable that even more children will die in the inhumane conditions they live in.”

To the sounds of Israeli drones flying ahead, Sila’s father Mahmoud carried her lifeless body from Nasser Hospital to a makeshift cemetery in Khan Yunis. There he dug a small grave in the sand.

After putting Sila to rest, Mahmud consoled Nariman.

“Her brothers and sisters are sick, exhausted. We are all sick. Our chest hurts, we have colds from the cold and rain,” says Nariman. “If we don’t die of war, we die of cold.”