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8 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The NGO Save the Children warned on Monday of the grave danger to which Gazan women are exposed when inducing labour due to the serious sanitary conditions in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli offensive, which began nine months ago and has left nearly 38,200 dead, advances.
The NGO said some women living in Gaza are choosing to induce labour to avoid giving birth while they are on the move in search of safety in the Palestinian enclave, while others are afraid to seek vital prenatal care for fear of bombing, it said in a statement.
An estimated 50,000 babies have been born in Gaza since last October, leading many women to give birth in traumatic, unhygienic and undignified conditions, without access to basic services. “Women face significant challenges throughout pregnancy, including lack of food and clean water, frequent displacement, loss of loved ones and fear of injury or death,” the organisation said.
Save the Children staff have been supporting pregnant women, newborns and families at their primary health care centre in Deir al-Bala in central Gaza since May, reporting “horrific conditions” for women giving birth and newborns struggling to survive their precarious first weeks.
Power cuts pose an “extreme risk” to babies in critical condition, especially those dependent on incubators. “We have seen that the constant stress and misery takes its toll on women, and some are making drastic decisions, such as inducing labour with medication for fear of losing their babies if they have to flee again to survive,” said Sharifa Jan, a midwife at Save the Children’s Health Emergencies Unit.
“We had a woman who was rushed to Save the Children’s maternity unit with severe obstetric complications after self-medicating before delivery. We had another case of a mother who gave birth without problems and was discharged the next day. However, she returned three days later when her baby was lethargic, had a high fever, refused to breastfeed and had a swollen umbilical cord that was oozing pus. This condition is only common in places with poor hygiene and a lack of clean water. Unfortunately, these are not isolated cases,” she lamented.
With Gaza’s health system decimated and restrictions imposed on the work of aid agencies, pregnant women and new mothers have been denied access to basic health and nutrition services in line with international standards, according to Save the Children. This has caused severe mental and physical harm to many of the mothers and their babies, with some taking extreme measures to try to protect their unborn children, the report said.
“The Gaza we see today is no place for a baby to be born. It is an unfathomable political failure that this war has dragged on for nine months – the same amount of time it took a mother to survive a full-term pregnancy or a baby to learn to crawl. Any woman who became pregnant during this time will have known only fear, trauma, deprivation and displacement,” said Rachel Cummings, Save the Children’s Gaza Team Director.
“We call for an immediate and definitive ceasefire as the only way to save lives in Gaza and put an end to the incessant and serious violations of children’s rights. There is no alternative,” he said.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) counted some 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza last October. Since then, an average of 5,522 births have been estimated to have occurred per month – a figure that includes both live and stillborn babies.
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