LONDON

Food shortage in Gaza's healthcare facilities has reached alarming levels as Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned Wednesday that patients and medical staff face starvation.

"Many patients across Gaza's healthcare facilities are no longer receiving food; the situation is more desperate than ever," Caroline Willemen, MSF project coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement.

She said community kitchens, which provide food for staff and patients, have been unable to do so in some of the facilities where they work in the last few days.

Willemen said that in the facilities where there is still food available for patients, it is "only a few days' worth of basic goods," without the range of nutrients necessary for recovery or healing.

"Across all our facilities in the Gaza Strip, we are watching helplessly as the serious medical consequences of these food shortages increase," she added.

"On July 19-20 July, the paediatric and maternity wards in Al-Helou hospital could not provide any food to women and children, and some days there isn’t enough baby formula for the 23 babies in the neonatal intensive care unit," said Willemen.

'They are deliberately starving them'

The official of the medical charity said that in Nasser hospital, there were currently 168 patients admitted to the paediatric and maternity wards who could not access food on July 20-21.

"This lack of food also applies to medical staff. Our Palestinian colleagues live in such precarious situations now, that even if they could afford the food, they could not store any."

She added: "The food situation is so dire that every day the question arises whether the patients in the hospitals we support, and the medical staff who care for them, will be able to eat anything at all."

"We are desperate," said Willemen, stressing that as an occupying power the Israeli authorities have an obligation to provide aid to people in Gaza, but "they are deliberately starving them."

The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Wednesday that 10 more Gazans starved to death in the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll from starvation since October 2023 to 111.

In March, Israel abandoned a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal with Hamas and has since kept Gaza’s border crossings shut, leaving humanitarian aid trucks stranded along the frontier.

Israeli forces have killed more than 59,100 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, collapsed the health system, and led to severe food shortages.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.