Child Malnutrition in Gaza Cut in Half as Humanitarian Access Expanded, New MedGlobal Report Finds — Gains at Risk Without Sustained Support

“Aid Reached Them. They Recovered.” — released in the third-anniversary week of the war in Gaza, documents a 50% drop in acute child malnutrition and warns progress will reverse if aid falters

CHICAGO, October 13, 2026 — MedGlobal today released Aid Reached Them. They Recovered., a new nutrition assessment showing that acute malnutrition among children under five in Gaza fell by half between July 2025 and July 2026 — from 16.8% to 8.4% — after expanded humanitarian access following the October 2025 ceasefire allowed aid organizations to scale up nutrition interventions.

The report, based on a SMART-compatible assessment of 1,304 households across North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Younis, also found:

• Severe acute malnutrition fell by 69%, from 6.8% to 2.1%
• Exclusive breastfeeding rose from 34.1% to 58.1%
• Minimum dietary diversity rose from 32.2% to 55.1%
• Maternal acute malnutrition declined from 22.2% to 17.4%
• Caregiver nutrition knowledge rose from 40% to 71%

The findings are corroborated by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), UNICEF, and the World Food Programme, which all attribute the improvement to large-scale humanitarian assistance.

The report follows MedGlobal’s July 2025 Starved by Siege assessment, which documented Gaza approaching famine conditions, with North Gaza recording acute malnutrition of 25.6%.

Dr. Zaher Sahloul, President & CEO, MedGlobal:

“A year ago, Gaza stood on the brink of famine. Today we can report something the world needs to hear: when aid reaches children, children recover. Acute malnutrition was cut in half — not by miracle, but by humanitarian access, therapeutic food, and health workers who never left their posts. But these gains are reversible. If the world looks away now, the numbers will reverse as quickly as they improved. We know how to treat malnutrition. What we need is the sustained access and funding to keep treating it.”

Dr. Salwa Elteibi, MedGlobal Gaza Director:

“Our teams witness this recovery every day — children who arrived skeletal are now playing, and mothers are breastfeeding with new confidence. But recovery is not the same as security. Most families in Gaza still depend on humanitarian assistance to eat. The evidence is now undeniable: aid works. The only remaining question is whether the international community will sustain it long enough to protect these children.”

But the report warns the recovery is fragile. The IPC projects 74,200 children aged 6–59 months will need treatment for acute malnutrition through April 2027, including more than 11,400 with severe acute malnutrition. The World Food Programme estimates approximately 1.4 million people remain food insecure and warns that up to 90% of Gaza’s population could return to severe food insecurity if assistance levels decline.

“Children in Gaza should not depend on changes in humanitarian access to determine whether they eat, recover or survive,” the report concludes. “The progress we have seen proves that malnutrition can be treated and prevented. The priority now is ensuring that access is sustained.”

The report calls on donors to maintain and expand nutrition funding, on humanitarian partners to sustain surveillance and community-based treatment, and on the international community to protect humanitarian access and ensure uninterrupted nutrition supply chains.

Over the past 12 months, MedGlobal reached more than 21,500 children with acute malnutrition treatment, screened over 100,000 children under five, screened more than 105,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women, counseled 65,704 mothers and caregivers, and trained 150+ health workers — through two nutrition stabilization centers, three hospitals, five medical points, and seven distribution sites.

About MedGlobal

MedGlobal is a humanitarian nonprofit organization that provides emergency response and health programs to build resilience among vulnerable communities around the world. The organization’s health programs support victims of crisis and conflict, refugees, internally displaced persons, and marginalized communities in disaster-affected and low-resource settings.

Since 2017, MedGlobal has impacted more than 40 million lives across 33 countries, with 95 percent of its work led by local health workers.

What We Couldn’t See: Lujain’s Story of Healing

After her father was killed, Lujain’s declining appetite and weight were only part of what she was experiencing. Coordinated nutrition and mental health care helped her begin to recover.

Deir Al Balah, Gaza

It started with a request. Lujain, a seven-year-old girl in Gaza, asked for a meal. Not just any meal, but a food she had not asked for in months.

In most households this would pass unnoticed. For the two health care workers following her care, it was the sign they had been waiting for. “She began asking for meals she hadn’t asked for before,” one of them recalls. “This gave me relief.”

To understand why a request for food could bring relief, it helps to go back to the point where eating stopped being simple.

When eating became part of a larger problem

Lujain’s father was killed in the conflict. In the period that followed, she experienced severe trauma, and its effects reached well beyond her emotional state.

“She had severe trauma after her father was killed,” says Saba Al-Najjar, a nutrition officer with MedGlobal in Gaza. “This caused a loss of appetite, a complex mental state, anemia, and severe weight loss.”

Anemia is a condition in which the blood carries too little oxygen. It leaves a child tired and struggling to focus. At school, Lujain’s concentration slipped. At home, and in daily activities, she withdrew.

Her mother saw it happening. “I noticed her mental and dietary health declining,” she says. She was told to bring Lujain to MedGlobal, where the family, displaced from their home and now living in a school, could see specialists.

Each of Lujain’s symptoms could be recorded on its own. Weight on a scale. Hemoglobin on a lab result. A teacher’s note about attention. Taken one at a time, they pointed to a nutritional problem with a nutritional solution. Taken together, they described something more.

Looking beyond nutrition

Saba met Lujain three months before this story was recorded. Her assessment established the visible clinical picture: a child who was underweight, anemic, and not eating enough.

Nutritional care was necessary, and Saba provided it. She monitored Lujain’s intake and weight and supported her with the vitamins she needed. But food and supplements alone would not reach what was driving the decline. A child who stops wanting to eat after the death of a parent is not only short of calories. The loss of appetite, the loss of weight, and the loss of interest in school had arrived together, and they had a shared origin.

“We treated Lujain with love and respect,” Saba says. “We cared for her, forming a partnership with the therapist to address both her mental and dietary needs.”

Two specialties, one plan of care

That therapist is Islam Al-Qernawi, a mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) worker. MHPSS is the term humanitarian programs use for counseling and structured activities that help people process distress, often in places where formal therapy is out of reach.

With Lujain, Islam’s work took forms a child could step into. “We helped her process all she went through using drawings, reading stories, writing her own tales, poetry, and group support sessions,” she says.

None of these is a treatment on its own. Together, they gave Lujain ways to express what had happened to her that did not depend on being asked direct questions about it. Over time, the team worked to shift the dark thoughts Lujain carried about her father’s death, and about the violence surrounding it, toward better ones. Her mother was part of that work, supporting her daughter at home between sessions. “They advised me to follow up,” her mother says, and she did.

Meanwhile, Saba continued to track Lujain’s nutrition and physical recovery. The two did not work in sequence, with one handing off to the other. They worked in parallel, sharing what they were seeing, so that progress in one area could be read in light of the other.

Recovery in small signs

Over three months, the changes were gradual and specific.

Lujain began asking for meals. Her weight, in Saba’s words, “improved a lot” with treatment and the vitamins she needed. In sessions, she became more engaged. “She participates and responds more,” the team observed. “She follows rules and focuses more at school.”

None of these signs belongs to a single specialty. A request for food is a nutritional event and a psychological one. Improved concentration reflects a body receiving what it needs and a mind less occupied by grief. This is why the moment Lujain asked for a meal carried such weight for the people caring for her. It was evidence that the two arcs of her recovery were moving together.

Why integrated care matters

Lujain is one child, and her experience should not be read as a description of every child in Gaza. But her case illustrates something clinicians in conflict settings encounter often, and that health services are not always organized to handle: physical and psychological needs that arrive as a single problem, presenting first through whichever symptom is easiest to measure.

What made the difference in Lujain’s care was not a new tool or technique. It was two health care workers recognizing that what each of them was seeing formed part of the same picture, and coordinating their care around it. A nutrition officer who notices that a child’s weight loss began after a bereavement has a colleague to turn to, and that colleague works alongside her rather than after her.

What changed

Recovery is a process, not an event. Lujain and her family are still displaced, living in a school. That has not changed. What has changed is that she eats, she draws and writes, she takes part, and she can concentrate in class.

“Lujain’s case is a true success story for us,” Saba says. Three months ago, her decline was recorded in numbers that told only part of the story. The rest was what the numbers could not show, and what two people caring for her chose to see together.

MedGlobal in Gaza

MedGlobal is an international medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency care, strengthens health systems, and builds local capacity in crisis-affected and underserved communities. Around 95 percent of its program delivery is carried out by local staff, working alongside national health workers and ministries of health.

In Gaza, where hospitals are non-functional or only partially functional, MedGlobal supports two maternity hospitals and provides a high volume of sexual and reproductive health services. Mental health and psychosocial support is treated as a core part of that work rather than an added service: it is integrated into medical points and primary care, and delivered through dedicated programs for children, adolescents, and conflict-affected families. Lujain’s care took place within this model, where a nutrition officer and a mental health worker could reach the same child through the same door.

Care like this depends on people who choose to stand with families in Gaza. Your support helps keep nutrition and mental health services running for children like Lujain. Learn more about how you can support our work in Gaza.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 30, 2026

MEDIA CONTACT:
Lucy Carradine, [email protected]

A new report by the international medical aid organization MedGlobal warns that rodents and other pests are impacting sites hosting over two-thirds of Gaza’s population – over 1.4 million people. Reports from MedGlobal’s dedicated team of clinicians and care providers in Gaza indicate that displacement camps are ravaged by these pests, creating a surge in bites, disease and a public health emergency.

The new report from one of the leading aid providers in Gaza warns that children and pregnant women are among the most affected by the crisis stemming from overcrowding, poor hygiene, and constant exposure. Between January and May 2026, MedGlobal facilities recorded over 10,000 consultations for conditions commonly spread by rodents or insects, including dermatological diseases, scabies, impetigo, gastrointestinal illnesses, and hepatitis, indicating a correlation between worsening exposure to pests and a growing public health crisis.

“One of my greatest concerns is the increasing spread of rats, mosquitos and other disease vectors in Gaza,” said Dr. Salwa Al-Tibi, MedGlobal’s Country Director in Gaza. “The ongoing conflict has damaged essential services and created living conditions that make disease prevention extremely difficult.”

The report points to several major drivers of the pest crisis:

• Poor Conditions in Displacement Sites – Garbage, rubble and overcrowding attract rodents and pests, provide nesting places, and facilitate the spread of disease.
• Fuel and Electricity Shortages – They are crippling hospitals and essential services including garbage pickup, wastewater treatment and sewage systems.
• Water and Sewage System Failures – Infrastructure was badly damaged by the conflict and has remained crippled and degraded during the ceasefire, with clean water production declining.
• Destruction of the Healthcare System – Severe shortages of medicines, antibiotics, laboratory supplies, and diagnostic equipment limit both treatment and disease surveillance.

“Rat and pest infestations are the visible symptoms of a systematic collapse. Health, water, and sanitation systems across Gaza are still unable to fully function, leading to human waste piling up near camps, hospitals lacking essential medicine and diagnostic tools, and limited clean water,” said Anastasia Moran, MedGlobal’s Director of Global Advocacy. “In a prolonged crisis, there is a risk that the international community becomes desensitized to what are, in fact, deeply abnormal conditions. Living conditions that enable rats to thrive are not fit for families and children to live in.”

“This report makes clear that the spread of pests across Gaza is not an unavoidable environmental problem, but a symptom of a wider collapse of critical services,” said Joseph Belliveau, Executive Director of MedGlobal. “Through urgent action – including an increase in the availability of fuel, water, housing materials, pesticides and other sanitation supplies – we can bring this crisis under control.”

MedGlobal operates 16 medical points and health centers across all five governorates of Gaza, providing primary care, mental health, emergency services, and other health services. The organization also fully supports a maternity and reproductive health hospital in the Middle Area, treating more than 1,400 patients every day. MedGlobal also provides nutrition services, with two nutrition stabilization centers and mobile teams that performed over 163,000 malnutrition screenings in 2025, treated malnutrition cases, distributed supplements, and offered essential medications, therapeutic food, and follow-up care. This work is possible thanks to MedGlobal’s team that includes 400+ local Palestinian doctors, nurses, and staff, supported by international medical missions.

MedGlobal is a humanitarian nonprofit organization that provides emergency response and health programs to build resilience among vulnerable communities around the world. The organization’s health programs support victims of crisis and conflict, refugees, internally displaced persons, and marginalized communities in disaster-affected and low-resource settings.

MEDIA CONTACT: 
[email protected]; 504-351-7635
Lucy Carradine, West End Strategy Team 

CHICAGO – A new in-depth report released by leading humanitarian aid organization MedGlobal finds that an alarming trend of extreme shortages of medicines and medical equipment is turning many treatable non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and kidney failure, into death sentences.  

“Silent Crisis”: The Collapse of Chronic Disease Care in Gaza,” makes clear: “Constraints on aid entry are a key barrier to treatment.” From March 3-11, 2026, MedGlobal conducted a rapid assessment based on interviews with frontline health professionals across all Gaza governorates, ultimately finding that Gaza’s health system is no longer able to sufficiently sustain chronic care. They found a collapse of essential medicines supply, gaps in critical medical equipment, mass disruptions in treatment, widespread deterioration in patient outcomes, and a rise in deaths.  

“In Gaza, an estimated 350,000 people living with chronic conditions face a rapidly deteriorating situation and preventable suffering,” 

Joseph Belliveau, MedGlobal’s executive director

“In Gaza, an estimated 350,000 people living with chronic conditions face a rapidly deteriorating situation and preventable suffering,” said MedGlobal’s executive director, Joseph Belliveau. “Our rapid assessment provides frontline clinical evidence that the conflict and supply restrictions have triggered a system-wide collapse in the continuity of NCD care, transforming manageable conditions into life-threatening emergencies. Without immediate intervention, deaths will accelerate.” 

The report found that 94% of surveyed health workers reported gaps in insulin availability for diabetes care. Over 30% of respondents report patients have stopped treatment entirely due to medicine shortages, while 28% are skipping doses to make limited supplies last longer.

More than 9 out of 10 health workers report increases in heart attacks and diabetic ketoacidosis (92% and 94% respectively), while 83% are seeing increases in strokes. 

“Every day, we witness patients with cancer, chronic illnesses, and kidney disease struggling to survive without access to the medicines and treatments they desperately need,”

Dr. Salwa Al-Tibi, MedGlobal’s Country Director in Gaza

“Every day, we witness patients with cancer, chronic illnesses, and kidney disease struggling to survive without access to the medicines and treatments they desperately need,” said Dr. Salwa Al-Tibi, MedGlobal’s Country Director in Gaza. “Behind every medicine shortage is a patient whose condition is worsening, whose suffering is increasing, and whose hope is fading.” 

“This crisis was as predictable as it was preventable. Treatable conditions like diabetes are turning into death sentences because basic medicine and equipment are not entering at scale almost nine months since the ceasefire deal. Medical supplies must be surged into Gaza immediately. Every day of delay is costing more patients their lives,” said Anastasia Moran, MedGlobal’s Director of Advocacy. 

MedGlobal calls for an immediate and rapid scale-up of medical aid, deployment of international medical teams, and an unhindered flow of humanitarian supplies, which are critical to stabilizing healthcare delivery and preventing further loss of life.  

Senior MedGlobal leaders and MedGlobal team members inside Gaza are available for interview to discuss the ongoing healthcare crisis in Gaza, and why ongoing medicine and medical equipment restrictions can be a death sentence for Palestinians with otherwise treatable conditions.  

MedGlobal is a humanitarian nonprofit organization that provides emergency response and health programs to build resilience among vulnerable communities around the world. The organization’s health programs support victims of crisis and conflict, refugees, internally displaced persons, and marginalized communities in disaster-affected and low-resource settings.