.png?sfvrsn=6d0e27cd_1 "Partnership for Change - v7 (1)")
Some 1.5 million people – including tens of thousands of pregnant women, new mothers and newborns – are now crammed into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town, in a desperate search for safety amid war. Tightly packed with nowhere to go, they find the prospect of further military operations in Rafah terrifying.
With bombs falling and just a trickle of aid, a public health disaster is worsening. Some 500,000 cases of communicable disease, including meningitis and acute Diarrhoea, have been reported. Women are reportedly miscarrying at a higher rate than before the war, and in many cases, Caesarean sections, amputations and other surgeries are being performed with partial anesthesia due to a lack of supplies. Everyone in Gaza is hungry, including 50,000 pregnant women, with malnutrition making them more susceptible to disease and less able to recover.
UNFPA and partners are providing support in this devastating crisis, but it’s not enough, as we do not have the access required to support all women in need. Military operations in Rafah would make it even harder to deliver aid, leaving “an already-fragile humanitarian operation at death’s door,” Martin Griffiths, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, has said.
We need a humanitarian ceasefire now, to end this brutal and intense bombardment of Gaza, to free all remaining hostages, and to enable full-scale aid deliveries to reach people in need across the territory.
"My family and I miraculously emerged from under the rubble,” Suhad tells UNFPA. “It was a tough journey to Rafah. It was exhausting walking long distances while pregnant.
Suhad Matar, 36, who has moved from the north to the south of Gaza in search of safety, has been forced to flee violence and destruction – including a bombardment on a building where she and her family were staying – time and again.
“Today, I am scheduled for a Caesarean section… Every time it rains, the tent floods and our beds get wet. It takes two or three days for the beds to dry out. The thing that worries me the most is how I'll keep my newborn daughter warm,” says Suhad. “I've chosen the name Juman for her. It means ‘Pearl.’”
Unbelievable terror – what I suffer from the most is the extreme terror. – Suhad, 36
Suhad is among the estimated 1.5 million people seeking safety in Rafah. Most are living in an enormous tent city. The majority are children, most of whom are starving. Famine is approaching at terrifying speed.
Everyone in Gaza is hungry, including the 50,000 pregnant women.
Taline, 11, now lives with her family in a displacement camp in Rafah. Every day she waits in a line for at least three hours to get water.
“There are not enough incubators, so there are four or more babies sharing each one,” says Dr. Ahmed Al Shaer, Paediatric Specialist, at the Al-Helal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital. “Most of them unfortunately die.”
In Rafah’s Al-Helal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital, 77 babies share 20 incubators.
The maternity hospital currently conducts about 250 deliveries a day, of which around 1 in 6 are Caesarean sections.
UNFPA has provided essential supplies to the Al-Helal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital, including for reproductive, maternal and neonatal health. These will help boost the hospital’s capacity.