[CAIRO, SciDev.Net] Chronic malnutrition will have lifelong consequences for children and babies who survive the war in Gaza, medics warn amid crisis levels of hunger.

The entire population of Gaza is at risk of famine, 19 months into Israel’s assault on the Palestinian enclave, according to the UN.

The limited number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza will only scratch the surface, as food and medical supplies are close to total depletion, medics and aid agencies warned.

Around 90 truckloads of humanitarian aid entered the Strip last week, after Israel eased an 11-week blockade that had prevented the delivery or relief to the population of 2.1 million, the UN said.

Medical experts say it will do little to alleviate the long-term impacts of chronic malnutrition on children and babies — if they are lucky enough to survive.

Nutrition professor Hazem Agha, dean of the faculty of public health at Al-Quds University, in East Jerusalem, Palestine, says chronic malnutrition and famine in Gaza poses a serious and enduring threat to the health of children, especially those under five and newborns.

He says the lasting effects include delayed physical and mental growth due to a deficiency in essential nutrients — which can lead to dwarfism — as well as delayed mental, linguistic, and motor development.

Malnutrition also weakens children’s immune systems, making them more vulnerable to life-threatening infectious diseases such as diarrhoea and pneumonia, especially in a war-torn environment that promotes their spread, says Agha.

“Malnutrition of mothers during pregnancy, as well as of children during the first months after birth, permanently affects brain formation and the efficiency of its functions,” he told SciDev.Net.

Alaa Elfeky, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Ain Shams University Faculty of Medicine in Egypt, says inadequate nutrition increases the likelihood of premature birth and has lifelong consequences.

“The causes of premature birth are a weak placenta resulting from the mother’s malnutrition, which means her inability to nourish the foetus and supply it with the oxygen it needs for life,” he explained.

Premature babies are more vulnerable to death and require well-equipped incubators to keep them alive.

Human Rights Watch previously reported that there were five babies in a single incubator due to the failure or damage of most incubators in the Gaza Strip.

Elfeky explains that the long-term effects of prematurity include “mental, intellectual, and motor complications, and problems related to normal physical growth. The child becomes smaller, weaker, and shorter, in addition to having weaker senses and cognitive abilities.”

These effects “will not be erased by the entry of five to six [aid] trucks daily, and they may persist for decades, up to 50 or 60 years, making it difficult to repair what the occupation has damaged”, he said.

Agha stressed the need for high-energy nutritional supplements rich in essential nutrients to treat children suffering from severe malnutrition, plus appropriate nutrition programmes for pregnant women and post-natal health services in Gaza.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF says thousands of children affected by severe malnutrition in Gaza urgently need therapeutic food, instant milk, and complementary foods.

A shortage of flour and cooking fuel led to the closure of 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme in late March, while in April the last remaining food stocks were consumed for kitchens providing hot meals to families in need, according to the agency.

Jonathan Crickx, UNICEF director of communications for Palestine, said the organisation was continuing to provide water and nutrition services with the limited resources available.

“However, our stocks of malnutrition prevention supplies are depleted, and supplies for treating severe malnutrition are running very low,” Crickx told SciDev.Net.

“At the beginning of 2025, experts estimated that approximately 60,000 children were in need of treatment and now the vast majority of children in Gaza face severe food deprivation.”

If the blockade continues, the lack of supplies essential for survival “could push food insecurity, acute malnutrition, and mortality rates above the threshold of famine in the coming months,” he added, also citing “extremely limited access to health services and a severe shortage of clean water and sanitation networks”.

He added that more than 116,000 metric tonnes of food aid were waiting in relief corridors ready to be brought into Gaza — enough to feed 1 million people for four months.

Suhaib Al-Hams, director of the Kuwait Specialized Hospital, in Rafah, southern Gaza, says 85 per cent of the hospital’s medicines have run out and food is in short supply.

“We don’t have even a single loaf of bread, neither for patients nor for medical staff,” Al-Hams told SciDev.Net .

“The hospital receives about 4,000 patients daily, who collapse on the ground due to emaciation and weakness and we can no longer find blood donors because the vast majority suffer from anaemia.”

Displaced people’s tents erected near the hospital are subject to round-the-clock shelling, which has also damaged the hospital building, Al-Hams added.

Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the amount of aid allowed into Gaza so far was “vastly insufficient”.

A report published earlier this month (12 May) said the whole population of Gaza was facing “crisis” levels of hunger or worse. The report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification partnership predicted that 470,000 people will face “catastrophic” levels of hunger — the worst on the food insecurity scale — by the end of September.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Middle East and North Africa desk.