Inside Gaza's Primary Maternity Hospital Where Babies Are Being Born Smaller, Premature, and With Congenital Disorders

Wala sits with her mother, Hanan, and her newborn son, Eysar, inside Emirati Maternity Hospital on April 6. Eysar was born premature and weighed just 4.4 pounds. Wala has been displaced for nearly two months and lives in a tent with her other six children. Photo: Tess Ingram/UNICEF Six months ago, before Israeli forces waged war on Gaza and began targeting and attacking the Palestinian health system, Gaza operated 36 hospitals. Today, only 10 remain and they're only semi-operational, UNICEF communications specialist Tess Ingram tells Jezebel. Among them is Emirate Maternity Hospital, where Ingram learned from one doctor that a preterm baby recently died because the infant needed heart surgery, but the hospital lacked the resources and specialists due to the strain of Israel's war. This is the hospital’s everyday reality: Three preterm babies or babies with birth defects or other diseases die per day, the doctor told Ingram—all of which are preventable deaths they’re simply “unable to treat” due to “lack of specialists, specialist equipment, lack of resources.” Since Israel launched this iteration of attacks on Gaza in October, Ingram says that Emirate has gone from delivering 18 babies per day to 75. The hospital—which has just 40 beds—also went from admitting 40 patients per day to 400 per day. Pregnant women are paired two to a bed and are released within three hours of giving birth, often to overcrowded shelters where disease and infection are rampant. Emirate doctors told Ingram they estimate that the rate of miscarriages they’re treating has doubled since October. Meanwhile, across Gaza, there’s just one hospital Ingram is aware of that's still offering limited prenatal services. But other than that, every other hospital is too strained for resources and too overrun with injured victims of Israeli attacks to offer prenatal care. And Israel is continuing to block aid from getting into Gaza.  "They just don’t see babies that size (11 pounds) anymore. They’re much, much smaller, and many of them have congenital disorders and infections." Meanwhile, an estimated 37 mothers are killed by Israeli forces every day, according to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) from March, all as the U.S. continues to fund and send weapons to Israel. With at least 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed since October, Gaza’s health ministry reported in February that 70% of the dead are women and children. It’s under these conditions that about 180 women in Gaza are giving birth each day, Ingram told Jezebel. Their pregnancies as well as their own health suffer tremendously from “the trauma of war,” where they’re unable to access basic prenatal care, unable to receive basic nutrition, and are also highly exposed to infections and disease. Humanitarian agencies like Human Rights Watch have determined that Israel is imposing starvation on Gaza’s population of 2.2 million, and pregnant people and newborns are bearing the brunt of this cruelty. “It's an absolutely nightmarish place to be a pregnant woman, beyond words, and it is a hellish environment to be born into,” Ingram said. As a result of malnutrition and being unable to access virtually any health care during their pregnancies, Ingram says that there are “exponentially more pregnancy and birth complications, sick pregnant women, babies born sick.” Preterm babies are also far more common: One doctor at Emirate told Ingram that before the war, the hospital was accustomed to larger newborns at around five kilograms or 11 pounds. “They just don’t see babies that size anymore. They’re much, much smaller, and many of them have congenital disorders and infections,” Ingram said. In particular, Ingram says a doctor at Emirate told her he’s never seen…