What Happens When There Is No Food: Experts Say Severe Malnutrition Could Set in Swiftly in Gaza
A panel of experts affiliated with the United Nations has warned that the population of the Gaza Strip is at imminent risk of famine, with more than 90 percent of its 2.2 million people facing “acute food insecurity” and a quarter of the population experiencing “catastrophic levels of hunger.”
Even before the war between Israel and Hamas, nearly 70 percent of Gazans were dependent on humanitarian assistance for food because the territory has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007. Now, only 20 to 30 percent of what people there need is being permitted over the border into Gaza, according to the World Food Program. The lack of electricity and fuel and the impossibility of moving around safely have compounded the challenges of producing food or getting it to people. Most people are going a day or longer without eating, the expert panel said.
As in a vast majority of other food crises the panel, the Famine Review Committee, has assessed in the 20 years since it was created, the situation in Gaza is not environmental but human-made. But Gaza is unusual for the speed with which people have been pushed into malnutrition.
In interviews, nutrition experts and doctors described what can happen when people can’t get food.
Children, pregnant and lactating women, people with medical conditions and older adults typically succumb first to acute malnutrition. How long they can survive under conditions of extreme hunger will vary.
“It depends on the age of the person,” said Zita Weise Prinzo, senior nutritionist with the World Health Organization. “It depends on their health status. It depends on whether they have access to liquids, or to some sort of food, even if it doesn’t cover all the nutrient needs.”
UNICEF, the humanitarian aid organization that focuses on children, is particularly concerned about infants, said Anuradha Narayan, the agency’s senior adviser on child nutrition in emergencies. Before the war, about 60 percent of Gazan infants were formula-fed. Their families now have little or no access to any food supply for them.
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