War-ravaged Gaza faces deadly surge in rare child infections

Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has unleashed a health and environmental catastrophe, creating fertile ground for outbreaks of multiple diseases amid food shortages, medicine scarcity, and contaminated drinking water.

Poliovirus, which resurfaced in Gaza in October 2024 after 25 years with no cases, is among the most alarming developments. Other serious illnesses have also escalated in recent months, including meningitis, pneumonia, and Guillain-Barré syndrome.

According to Gaza's health ministry, there have been 452 cases of meningitis, 103,000 cases of scabies, 65,000 skin rashes, nearly 11,000 cases of chickenpox, 71,000 cases of hepatitis A, 167,000 cases of dysentery, 1,116 cases of spinal meningitis, and 64 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome - three of them fatal.

At Al-Rantisi Children's Hospital in Gaza City, three-year-old Ezz al-Din Sabra lies in intensive care, connected to a ventilator and medical tubes. He has battled severe pneumonia and breathing difficulties for two months, until his condition recently worsened, leading to cardiac arrest before doctors revived him.

"The recurrence of severe pneumonia is caused by an accumulation [in his lungs] of smoke and dust from Israeli missiles," Dr Mohammed al-Ali, who is treating Ezz al-Din, told The New Arab’s Arabic-language edition.

Most patients needed immediate ventilation and often required prolonged stays in intensive care, he said.

"Ezz al-Din has suffered two relapses in the past twenty days. Out of every five ICU admissions, four are pneumonia cases, all with high fevers, respiratory difficulties, joint and muscle pain, and very slow response to treatment," he added.

The abnormal frequency of pneumonia and other infections, combined with patients relapsing during treatment, reflects the scale of the crisis, he said.

In the same hospital, eight-year-old Lara al-Batrawi has just left intensive care after 65 days battling Guillain-Barré syndrome.

"She woke up at night to go to the bathroom, and while walking, she collapsed. In the morning, when I tried to wake her, she didn’t respond. I discovered she wasn’t breathing, so I rushed her to the hospital," her mother recalled the terrifying onset.

Lara was diagnosed with paralysis and placed on a ventilator for 50 days before she began to regain movement. Though discharged from the ICU, she remains severely malnourished.

"Her weight has halved, and she looks like a skeleton," her mother said. "She needs special nutrition, but we can’t provide the necessary fruits and vegetables because of the high cost and because my husband was martyred."

Doctors say Guillain-Barré syndrome is poorly understood but can cause respiratory failure and paralysis of the limbs, sometimes reversible with treatment involving intravenous nutrition and tracheostomies.

Six-month-old Malik Mahmoud Totah also lies in Al-Rantisi. Born with a spinal defect, he developed recurring fevers and diarrhoea, and was later diagnosed with meningitis.

"We’ve been back and forth to the hospital for two months," his mother said. "He can only tolerate 30 ml of milk at a time and refuses other food. Even nutritional supplements leave him malnourished."

Children are also suffering from toxic fumes caused by families cooking over fires fuelled with wood and plastic.

Three-month-old Suwar Hassan Qassem, born undernourished with a heart defect, was exposed to these fumes while living in a shelter.

"When she began having seizures, I brought her to the hospital," her mother said.

Al-Rantisi's wards are overflowing. With beds full, sick children often lie on the corridor floors. Even so, parents are grateful for any care, fearing the hospital could once again be forced out of service after only recently resuming minimal operations.

This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.