Jerusalem, Cairo, Geneva, 7 April 2025 – On World Health Day, with the theme “Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures,” the Gaza Strip continues to be one of the most dangerous places to be a child and where pregnancy is clouded by fear due to ongoing violence, displacement and lack of medical access.
Between 18 March and 4 April 2025, since the resumption of hostilities, reportedly more than 500 children and 270 women have been killed. No aid has entered Gaza since 2 March, deepening the hunger and malnutrition crisis, leaving families without clean water, shelter, and adequate health care, and increasing the risk of disease and death.
An estimated 55 000 women are pregnant in Gaza, with one third facing high-risk pregnancies. Around 130 babies are born each day, 27% by caesarean. Approximately 20% of newborns are pre-term, underweight, or born with complications, needing advanced care that is rapidly diminishing.
The fragile health system is overwhelmed by the influx of casualties, including among children. Essential medicines, trauma and medical supplies are rapidly running out, threatening to reverse hard-won progress rehabilitating hospitals and keeping them operational. Evacuation orders and attacks on health further restrict access to health care and risk closure of hospitals and medical facilities.
Due to the aid blockade, WHO’s supplies for maternal and child health, including for cesarean sections, anesthesia for delivery and pain management, intravenous fluids, antibiotics, and surgical sutures, are critically low. Blood units needed for complicated deliveries are in extremely short supply. Partners report that essential equipment and medicines, such as portable incubators, ventilators for neonatal intensive care, ultrasound machines, and oxygen pumps, along with 180 000 doses of routine childhood vaccines — enough to fully protect 60 000 children under the age of two — have not been permitted to enter, leaving ill newborns and young children without the life-saving care they urgently need.
The food shortage is deepening the crisis and threatens to reverse the progress made in food security during the ceasefire. Mothers and children are hit hard. A recent Nutrition Cluster analysis found that between 10 to 20% of 4500 surveyed pregnant and breastfeeding women are malnourished. The closure of 21 outpatient malnutrition treatment sites, due to insecurity or evacuation orders, has disrupted life-saving care for over 350 acutely malnourished children and has severely limited the ability to detect and treat new cases.
Despite security risks and access restrictions severely hampering WHO’s response, efforts to support health facilities and strengthen maternal and child health services continue amid dwindling supplies. Focus is on the delivery of essential medicines, equipment, and supplies, training of health workers, and deploying emergency medical teams to enable safe deliveries and care for sick children.
WHO urgently calls for the lifting of the aid blockade, the protection of health care, unimpeded humanitarian access across Gaza, the immediate resumption of daily medical evacuations, release of hostages, and a ceasefire that paves the way for lasting peace.
Related links
https://www.who.int/emergencies/situations/conflict-in-Israel-and-oPt
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