One in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City as cases increase every day

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General

24 July 2025 - From Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner-General as posted on his official X account (previously known as Twitter)

“People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses”:  a colleague in Gaza told me this morning.

Meanwhile, according to UNRWA latest findings: one  in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City as cases increase every day.

When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food and care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold.

Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated,  weak and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.

More than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger.

This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave.

UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all. They are increasingly fainting from hunger while at work. When caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing.

Parents are too hungry to care for their children. Those who reach UNRWA clinics don’t have the energy, food, or means to follow medical advice.

Families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive. Their existence is threatened.

Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

We, at UNRWA, have the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt. - UNRWA