Elidalis Burgos, an American critical care nurse volunteering in Gaza, told NBC News that she had witnessed “an entire population” suffering from starvation due to the Israeli blockade.
“The signs are evident… not just in the patients in the ICU,” she said, “but also the health workers themselves” who were showing severe malnutrition, temporal wasting, muscle waste and frailty.
“There’s just no food,” said Burgos, who is working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and volunteering with the medical NGO Glia. “There is just nothing getting in, [it] hasn’t been getting in for months.”
Among the latest victims was Abdulrahman Al-Ghalban, a 17-year-old who had suffered from cerebral palsy since birth and depended on specialized nutritional milk, specific food, and constant medical care, said Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, a pediatric Specialist at Nasser Hospital.
“He needed constant special nutrition, but we had nothing,” his mother, Marwa Al-Ghalban, told NBC News. “We tried to feed him whatever we could find at home, but in his last days, he couldn’t eat at all.”
