A time cheerful Fitzpatrick realized that the crisis of malnutrition Gaza was promoted to a newer and more deadly phase, when surgeons in several hospitals still operate on the waist, they reported that the wounds were no longer closed.
“There is so many traumatic injuries such as explosive wounds and broken bones,” says Fitzpatrick, assistant professor at Friedman School of Nutrition at the University of Tufts. “But they do not cure because people do not have nutrients to build collagen necessary to close them. So wounds that have a month, even two months, still look fresh, as if they took place last week.”
According to the Ministry of Health conducted by Hamas in Gaza, the death of malnutrition in the territory since October 2023 has now reached 154 and 89 fatalities came from children. World Health Organization Reported this week In this July there was a special raise in the number of deaths, with 63 fatalities related to malnutrition reported to healthcare facilities, including 38 adults, one child over 5 years and 24 children under 5 years senior. Most of these patients were considered dead after arrival.
The scope of this crisis was transferred to the observing world through photos of skinny children and infants with thinned hair. Fitzpatrick, which examines hunger and its biological effects, explains that in the conditions of extreme deficiencies, the body has a built -in priority system, designed to preserve the most critical organs, heart and brain to the very end. After the employ of the original fuel resources – glycogen stored in the liver and muscles – says that the body uses fat to energy, before degrading bones, muscles, and then, if necessary, more resistant organs such as liver to extract protein. “Skin and hair are the first neglected,” says Fitzpatrick. “Hair will simply fall out. It will change color many times. The skin becomes very thin.”
In some cases, a severe protein deficiency can cause a condition known as Kwashiorkor or swelling of hunger, characterized by swelling due to fluid moving to the tissues of the body, especially in the stomach. “There are different types of acute malnutrition,” says Fitzpatrick. “There is a thin type and there is Kwashiorkor and we see both in gas. In children you can see it on their faces. Their cheeks become fluffy, and you like:” Oh, good “. But no, it’s a liquid. “
A lot of our understanding of acute malnutrition comes from conducted research Survivors of the HolocaustThe main hunger of the 20th century, such as Great Chinese hunger and Ethiopian hunger from the 80s and anorexia. Marko Kerac, associate professor of global health and nutrition of children at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, describes the body as a progressive process of elation, in which for some time people are malnourished, but still medically stable before they enter a much more earnest phase characterized by the loss of appetite, lethargy and anxiety.
Based on the latest reports from Gaza, in which he describes almost one in five children under 5 years of age, he is very malnourished, Kerac says that more and more people are entering the last phase. Statistics collected by the NGO Global Nutrition Cluster show an raise in cases from the beginning of June, with over 5,000 people under 5 years of age. “The youngest children are more sensitive because their organs are still developing,” says Kerac.