PALESTINE
Fri 20 Oct 2023 8:54 am - Jerusalem Time
War in Gaza doubles aches and pains of Palestinian pregnant women
Israel's ongoing intense attacks on the Gaza Strip for the second week double the suffering of women there, after leaving more than 50,000 pregnant women without health care.
A UN report confirmed that pregnant women face unimaginable challenges, especially in light of the presence of more than 5,000 women who will give birth this month, and many of them are at risk of facing health complications after giving birth.
In Nasser Governmental Hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Hadeel Skaik gave birth weeks before the scheduled date in the maternity ward, but others were killed or miscarried as a result of the Israeli attacks.
As for pregnant women in Gaza, the violent Israeli attacks and the tight siege on the Strip caused them much fear and horror, and most of them lost the most basic types of health care and necessary protection.
Mrs. Skaik, 29, who fled Gaza City with her family to the south of the Strip last week, told Xinhua News Agency, "My child is fine, but I don't know if we will escape death or not."
She added, "We are terrified. We fled from Gaza to here (Khan Yunis) on Friday, and two days later they took me to the hospital and I was dying from intense pain. May God protect me and my son."
Sukayk gave birth to a child, whom she named Muhammad, last Sunday afternoon after undergoing a caesarean section. She remained with her newborn under intensive medical care for about 24 hours before the doctors gave her permission to leave the hospital.
Skaik now lives with her husband, parents, and three children in a rented apartment in the center of Khan Yunis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, and all the time she embraces her infant and children to calm them down from the sound of the non-stop explosions.
Her mother-in-law said while leaning on a pillow in the middle of the narrow apartment, “What God wrote, we will see...”
She added, "We (we) are better than others, but (just) take care of yourself, your health, and your baby, and (leave) the rest to God."
Israel began its air attacks on the Gaza Strip, which is inhabited by 2.3 million people, after the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) launched an unprecedented attack on towns in southern Israel, killing 1,300 people on October 7.
Last Friday, the Israeli army asked all civilians to leave the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City and head to the center and south of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli bombing led to the death of 3,785 Palestinians within 13 days, while the death toll continues to rise around the clock.
The obstetrician and gynecologist at Nasser Governmental Hospital in Khan Yunis, Muhammad al-Raqab, said, “The demand of pregnant women, especially those displaced from Gaza and the north, in the maternity ward is very high, and we are trying with the existing capabilities to provide services for the most serious cases.”
Al-Raqab added, "Most cases arrive needing early delivery, as they are subjected to caesarean sections and their newborns are placed in incubators."
The Hamas government office in Gaza reported that more than a million Palestinians, including 50,000 pregnant women, have fled their homes, and more than half of them live in schools and facilities run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Palestinian Ahmed Mushtaha from Gaza City is still in shock after his wife died days before she gave birth to her first child due to health complications she suffered at the beginning of the Israeli attack.
Mushtaha, 36 years old, said, "We fled our home and took shelter with our relatives. At night, my wife started screaming and we were not able to move her due to the Israeli bombing until the morning, but she died from severe pain."
The United Nations Population Fund in Palestine said on the (X) platform earlier this week that pregnant women in Gaza have nowhere to go and face “unimaginable” challenges.
In the Rafah camp on the border with Egypt, the family of Palestinian Tahani Taha, who gave birth last week, is keen to provide the necessary necessities of life for the new baby and his mother.
Despite this, the new baby does not stop screaming while his siblings, the eldest of whom is nine years old, play in front of the family room that has been displaced for three weeks.
Taha's husband said while puffing on a cigarette in a shelter center, "The situation here is unbearable. You have to wait half an hour or an hour to enter the bathroom. You have to wait your turn for everything, and even the food and water provided are not enough.."
The school has 22 toilets, but there is no running water all the time.
Displaced people describe their conditions inside the shelter centers as catastrophic. A man who identified himself as Abu Salim and lives in a room adjacent to the Taha family said, “People cannot eat or drink, and most of them have not bathed in a week... Look, they are all scratching.” They rub their skin.”
In a hospital whose construction was funded by the United Arab Emirates in Rafah, the maternity ward does not stop receiving pregnant women who are about to give birth or who have suffered bleeding as a result of panic and running in fear of Israeli bombing.
Midwife Aziza Nofal, who has worked at the hospital since its opening in 2006, said, "More than ten women lost their fetuses, and one died during a caesarean section during the last three days."
Nofal added, "Throughout my service here, I have never seen such a horrific situation."
Share your opinion
War in Gaza doubles aches and pains of Palestinian pregnant women