It is estimated that there are around 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip and that an average of 160 babies are born every day “in terrible conditions.”
The women of Gaza are exposed to other types of violence beyond the conflict between Israel and Hamas itself, forced to give birth in the streets, no menstrual products and victims of a malnutrition that affects their infants.
This is explained to the EFE news agency by the executive director of the Spanish committee of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), Raquel Martí.
“Hospitals cannot receive patients due to the collapse and this is producing a critical gap in access to health services that particularly affects women and children. Comprehensive emergency care for women’s healthattention to newborn sexual and reproductive health is no longer being carried out,” warns Martí.
It is estimated, adds the executive director, that there are some 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip and that every day there are an average of 160 babies “in terrible conditions.”
“Many of these women cannot reach hospitals and are having to give birth in UNRWA shelters, in their homes without health carein the streets among rubble or in absolutely saturated health centers,” he says. He denounces that “sanitary conditions worsen every day and there is a very high risk of get infections and have medical complications due to the lack of supplies and human resources”.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began, women and girls in the Gaza Strip have experienced disproportionate impacts in multiple aspects of their lives and thousands of them have deceased collaterally.
This latest escalation of violence that began on October 7, following the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli territory and Israel’s immediate response, has caused 15,000 deadof which more than 6,150 are minors, and more than 4000 womenaccording to the Hamas Government.
The conflict also impacts the mental health of women, who are experiencing an “extreme and traumatic” situation as they have been forced to move and have to take care of adult relatives, many of them sick, and children.
Increase in gender violence
Raquel Martí also warns that overcrowding in shelters and refuges is causing an increase in family tensions that can trigger an increase in gender violence.
However, now there are no associations, NGOs or hospitals that can address gender violence in Gaza.
Source: Eitb
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