File photo. A medical worker stands by a prematurely born baby lying in an infant incubator at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of Nasser Medical Complex, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on 13 January, 2025 Photo: AFP / Bashar Taleb
Malnutrition among pregnant and breastfeeding women in the Gaza Strip is having a "devastating domino effect" on thousands of newborns, the United Nations warned Tuesday.
UNICEF, the UN children's agency, flagged an alarming surge in the number of babies born weighing less than 2.5kg in the Palestinian territory.
"Malnourished mothers" give birth to underweight or premature babies, who either "die... or survive, only to face malnutrition themselves or potential lifelong medical complications", UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingram told a press briefing in Geneva, speaking from central Gaza.
She added that low birth weight infants were about 20 times more likely to die than infants of normal weight.
In 2022, before the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel and the ensuing Israeli offensive in Gaza, five percent of babies born in Gaza were underweight - an average of 250 babies a month, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory which the UN considers reliable.
Despite fewer births in the first half of 2025, 10 percent of babies were born underweight during this period - around 300 babies a month.
And in July to September, the three months before the fragile ceasefire on October 10, the figure surged to 460 babies a month, Ingram said.
"Low birth weight is generally caused by poor maternal nutrition, increased maternal stress, and limited antenatal care," she said.
"In Gaza, we witness all three, and the response is not moving fast enough nor at the scale required."
Ingram said that in October, UNICEF treated 8300 pregnant and breastfeeding women for acute malnutrition, noting that there was no discernible malnutrition among this group before October 2023.
UNICEF said the number of babies dying on their first day had risen from an average of 27 in 2022 to 47 between July and September this year.
"At least 165 children are reported to have died painful, preventable deaths related to malnutrition during the war," said Ingram.
Ingram called for more aid to enter Gaza and for the opening of the Rafah crossing from Egypt.
"No child should be scarred by war before they have taken their first breath," she said.
"So much suffering could have been prevented, if international humanitarian law had been respected."
- AFP
