Gaza’s children face deadly wave of disease amid war and siege

The Israeli war on the Gaza Strip has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe, with children paying the heaviest price. Shortages of food, medicine and clean water, coupled with pollution from bombardment, have turned Gaza into fertile ground for deadly diseases.

Polio was once the main health threat in Gaza, but now children face a wave of equally dangerous illnesses, including meningitis, pneumonia and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Ministry of Health data show alarming numbers: 452 meningitis cases, 103,000 cases of scabies, 65,000 skin rashes, 11,000 chickenpox cases, 71,000 hepatitis A infections, 167,000 cases of bloody diarrhoea, 1,116 spinal fever cases and 64 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, including three deaths.

At Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City, three-year-old Ezzedine Sabra lies connected to a ventilator after his heart stopped during a severe respiratory crisis. Dr Mohamed Al-Ali says the rise in pneumonia is directly linked to smoke from Israeli rockets and toxic dust: “Four out of every five children admitted to intensive care are pneumonia cases. Their response to treatment is painfully slow.”

In just three months, the hospital’s intensive care unit has admitted 48 children, with nine losing their lives.

The tragedy touches every family. Eight-year-old Lara Al-Batrawi spent 65 days on artificial ventilation after sudden paralysis. Though she is now breathing on her own, malnutrition has reduced her weight by half, leaving her frail “like a skeleton,” her mother says.

Infants are suffering most. Six-month-old Malek Mahmoud Tottah and 35-day-old Mohamed Junaid are battling meningitis. Three-month-old Sewar Hassan Qasem was born with a heart defect and now suffers respiratory infections from toxic smoke in overcrowded shelters. Adam Mohamed Al-Kafarna, also three months old, has been hospitalised since birth with brain damage and seizures that Gaza’s overwhelmed doctors cannot treat. His mother pleads: “He must travel for treatment before it is too late.”

With wards overflowing, many children lie on hospital floors, while parents fear Al-Rantisi could be forced out of service again — a death sentence for their sons and daughters.

As Gaza’s health system collapses under siege and war, its children — weakened by hunger, disease and relentless bombardment — are left fighting for survival.