Starving for the Second Time in Gaza

UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram reports from an intensive care unit in Gaza City, where 9-year-old Jana is suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

Ingram met Jana 15 months earlier, when she had severe acute malnutrition for the first time. UNICEF was able to evacuate Jana to the south, where she received eight months of treatment at a field hospital and got better.

Jana's mother, Nesma Ayed, says the family returned to the north during the ceasefire, and Jana's health improved. Then came the supply blockade, bare shelves without food and now famine.

Jana's health has deteriorated all over again. "Every day I see my daughter fading before my eyes," Ayed says. "The pain is indescribable, especially when she had no illnesses before."

"How is it that we are in the position where a child like Jana has to suffer twice?" asks Ingram. "She had to survive these horrors twice. We get the treatments in to save her life. And yet, the condition remains so bad, and the deprivation continues to the extent that we are back here again. That is unacceptable. This is a shame on the world."

UNICEF needs immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian access across Gaza to scale up lifesaving support for children.

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