Trapped between hunger and disease: Gaza child fights to survive
Mother pleads for urgent transfer abroad as Israeli blockade leaves toddler without medicine or food
File Photo
GAZA CITY, Palestine/ISTANBUL
On a hospital bed in southern Gaza, two-year-old Yaqeen Abu Telkh lies swaddled in gauze where toys should be, her tiny body scarred by a rare genetic disorder that makes her skin tear at the slightest touch.
Yaqeen was born with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a condition so cruel that even minor friction can rip her skin open. Her illness has grown life-threatening under Israel’s blockade and war on Gaza, which have stripped hospitals of essential medicines, bandages, and nutritional support.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, her mother, Israa Abu Telkh, struggles to comfort her.
“She cries every day from wounds I cannot heal,” she told Anadolu. “Before the war, she managed to live with the illness. But after we were forced into a tent and medicines disappeared, everything got worse.”
Doctors say Yaqeen now weighs only 7 kilograms, far below the healthy average of 11 for her age, after months of acute malnutrition and anemia.
EB is so severe that even swallowing food can trigger blisters inside the mouth or stomach. Without treatment, children like Yaqeen risk infections and organ damage that can become fatal.
The Gaza Health Ministry says more than 5,200 children urgently need medical evacuation abroad, but Israel’s closure of all crossings since March has sealed off that possibility.
For Yaqeen’s mother, the statistics are drowned out by her daughter’s suffering.
“I pray every day she can leave Gaza for treatment,” she said. “Without that, I fear she will not survive.”
In August, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declared famine in northern Gaza, warning it could spread south within weeks. The finding, backed by 21 international organizations including the UN’s food and health agencies, was dismissed by Israel despite evidence of widespread starvation.
The Israeli army has killed almost 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable, and led to starvation and spread of diseases.
On Tuesday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory confirmed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
