A GAZA dentist turned soup kitchen volunteer has lifted the lid on the horrors of starvation gripping the territory.
Ibrahim Shareef Al-Ashi, 29, worked as a dentist before the genocide and for the last year has been volunteering to help feed others at the Gaza Soup Kitchen.
He told the Sunday National that people were reduced to eating just one meal a day as Israel prevents food from entering Palestine.
Al-Ashi said: “If you eat three meals today, you will not eat tomorrow.”
He added that before the famine, the Gaza Soup Kitchen would deliver around 2000 meals a day – this is now down to just 50 as the markets are now “completely empty”.
What little there is has become inordinately expensive due to scarcity, he said, with the price of a kilogram of flour rocketing from less than $1 to $30.
Children come to the soup kitchen suffering from acute malnutrition, said Al-Ashi, who told the story of seeing one boy who “came to our clinic as a skeleton, he was just bones, there is no muscle in his body”.
So violent are the effects of malnutrition that the boy was given food supplements.
[[Gaza]] was on the brink of running out of food supplements on Friday, according to the United Nations, with supplies of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) expected to run out by mid-August if the situation did not change.
RUTF is an energy-dense paste which comes in a foil sachet and is used to treat children with severe wasting, according to Unicef’s website.
It is made with peanuts, sugar, milk powder, oil, vitamins and minerals and does not require cooking or preparation involving water, meaning it does not carry the risk of contamination. Unicef has previously warned that due to overlapping crises throughout the world, its price has spiked.
Palestinians are currently subsisting on a diet of rice, lentils or bread, but there is no meat, said Al-Ashi.
He lives in Gaza City, with his mother, brother and sister, having returned to his home after a period of displacement in the south.
Though the engineered famine in Gaza has sparked international condemnation of Israel and appears to have spurred some into symbolic gestures like France’s commitment to recognise Palestine in September, Israel’s military assault on the territory remains relentless.
“Every day there are airstrikes, if you can hear the drone, it is like a buzzy sound, for us every day, every hour, it is a fact of life to hear it,” said Al-Ashi.
“The airstrikes never stop and there is no safe place here in Gaza.”
He added: “We are not numbers, we are mothers, children and families. People here are dying from hunger because of the world’s silence.
“We are living in catastrophe.”
While starvation can be treated, its long-term effects can be devastating.
Sufferers can experience impaired fertility, heart attacks, kidney failure, stunted growth and fragile bones. Mental health, already under intense strain amid displacement and widespread death, can be put under extra pressure from malnutrition, with sufferers experiencing anxiety, depression and poor sleep.
Unicef said previously that from April to mid-July, 20,504 children had been admitted with acute malnutrition, of which 3247 were suffering from severe acute malnutrition, nearly triple the number in the first three months of the year.
A friend of Ibrahim Shareef Al-Ashi's from Italy has set up a fundraiser to support him. You can find out more and donate by clicking here.
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