Dr. Mohammad Sakaar is hungry. So greedy he struggles to stay upright, desperately treating sick patients at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. On Thursday, he passed away while working in the ward. And after recovering, he came back to finish his 24-hour shift.
“My fellow doctor caught me before he collapsed and gave me IV fluid and (sugar). There was a foreign doctor who prepared it with a packet of tango juice. I drank it right away,” Dr. Saqer told CNN. “I’m not diabetic – this was hunger. There was no sugar. There was no food.”
As Gaza’s hunger crisis deepens, people trying to live out a critically malnourished population are suffering along with their patients.
Dr. Saqer said the number of colleagues who have been stunned at work has been rising rapidly recently, with doctors and nurses from multiple departments falling out of hunger and fatigue.
Dr. Feider Naim, a surgeon and director of Al Ali Al Arabi Hospital, north of the Strip, told CNN that many of his colleagues also fell from hunger and malnutrition, including two who collapsed during surgery this week.
“I’m a hospital director, so one of my jobs is to find food for the staff. We can’t eat enough food. If we eat once a day, we’re lucky and most people (in the hospital) work 24/7 – it’s very difficult to continue like that,” Dr. Naim said.
In-person testimony from the two doctors will be tallied earlier this week when a group of over 100 international humanitarian organizations warned that they “were witnessing their colleagues and partners.”
Dr. Saqer is the director of nurses at Nasser Hospital, but like the other medics there, he only eats one meal a day.
“We need to treat patients who are physically drained and evenly drained. Those who are exhausted will treat those who are exhausted, they treat those who are hunger, they treat those who are weak,” he said.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, director of Altarir Hospital, the pediatric and maternity hospital at Nasser Medical Complex, said hunger affects the health of all physicians.
“Now, most of them suffer from depression, general debilitating, inability to concentrate, memory loss. Their energy levels are very low and not what they used to be. Most people have lost their passion for life,” he told CNN.
He said hospital kitchens had run out of food and the international humanitarian kitchens that previously fed doctors, nurses and patients’ families were also closed.
“Everyone who works in the hospital has no food. Doctors and nurses shift 24 hours a day on an empty stomach,” he said.
The ward that treats malnourished children at Nasser Hospital, where Saqer Dr. Saqer works, is filled with skinned babies and no longer human.
The bones of the face, spines and thoracic bones appear to protrude from under the skin. Their long, thin limbs resemble limp noodles that are barely moving.
CNN video filmed on Friday shows that many of them are crying, but some are so weak that they can’t even do that anymore. They are just lying in their beds or on a mattress placed on the floor, observing the world around them with huge visible eyes on their weakened faces. Some have a bloated stomach – a signal of malnutrition.
The mother, desperately trying to feed them, is thin herself. They also look exhausted and terrifying.
One of them, Yasmin Abu Sultan, spoke to CNN as he was about to give his daughter Mona a syringe.
“She needs fruit. She needs to feed vegetables, but there’s nothing… her mother was breastfeeding. We didn’t rely on formulas and now most mothers are dependent on food shortages. It’s impossible for women to breastfeed without food,” she said.
Another mother, Naja Hashem Dalbah, said that the doctor gave her a supplement to her daughter, Sila Dalbah, but the ceremony was not available to her. She suffers from chronic diarrhea and dehydration, so she needs milk.
“I told them they needed milk. They said if you could, you could go and get your own milk. But here in this room alone, four children died of malnutrition. I’m sure my daughter will be the fifth.”
But at least babies Mona and Shira Dalbaf are in the hospital.
Another mother, Hidaya al Mtawwaq, who spoke to CNN, lives with her son Mohammad in a tent near Al-Ahli Al-Arabi Hospital in Gaza City. He is 3 years old and weighs only 6 kilograms (13 pounds). It’s down from 9 kilograms (20 pounds) a few months ago.
“He can’t stand on his feet and he can’t move like he used to due to hunger and lack of food,” she told CNN.
Al Mtawwaq took Mohammad to several hospitals and has always been told the same thing. He urgently needs dietary supplements that are not available in Gaza. All she can get for him is a little milk — and it’s still very difficult.
Al Mutauwak said her husband was killed in the war. “I’m struggling just to buy a can of milk for him. I’m really tired. I’m exhausted and tired.”
All 2.1 million people in Gaza are food insecurity without reliable access to healthy, affordable foods, nutritious, and healthy, the United Nations said this week. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 900,000 children are hungry, and 70,000 have already shown signs of malnutrition.
The situation gets worse with time. The borderless doctor said Thursday that the rate of severe malnutrition among children under the age of five at the clinic has tripled in the past two weeks alone.
Dr. Naim said children born during the war were particularly vulnerable to health problems caused by malnutrition.
“People aged 2-3 are growing in unhealthy states with weakened immunity and allergies. They suffer from brain development and motor problems, and these problems will continue in the future even if they survive hunger,” he told CNN, adding that Gaza feels abandoned by the world.
“As peaceful Palestinians, we are collectively punished… (We) President (Donald) Trump must take a strong stance, especially as he claims to be a person of peace and commits to achieving peace.”
Dr. Al Fara told CNN he was treating a little girl who developed a dangerous potassium deficiency due to hunger.
“I noticed (the girl) was listening to our conversation and asked my mother how to prevent potassium deficiency,” the doctor said, and the girl’s mother said eating potatoes and bananas that are not available in Gaza would help raise the girl’s potassium levels.
“Then the girl asked her mother if there were bananas in paradise, and she replied yes. The girl said, ‘Then I’ll become a martyr so I can eat bananas and get better,'” recalled Dr. Al Fara.
“Can you imagine a child who wants to die just to get food?”
Like all of his colleagues, Dr. Saqer said he will continue to think about his family while treating patients. Because in Gaza, doctors are never sure that the next victim coming through the door will not become someone they care about.
“Sadly, we work with all our hearts in our hungry family,” he told CNN, adding that when his wife told him there was no food this week, he went to the market and tried to buy some.
“Currently, flour is sold like Gaza gold. I bought two kilograms (4.4 lbs) for three days for 310 shekels ($92),” he said.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the average daily wage in Gaza is just under $13 a day in 2021.
Humanitarian organisations have long warned about the risk of hunger in Gaza. The territory has always been dependent on humanitarian aid, but following the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks launched by Hamas from Gaza, the flow of food and other essential items has been severely restricted by Israel.
During the war there was a period in Gaza where food was not permitted, and while aid is currently dripping, it is not enough, and even the smallest things that pass through have not reached those who need it the most.
Finding food is becoming increasingly dangerous. The United Nations said this week that more than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces while seeking food since late May, when the Israeli military and the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations.
World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from artificial “massive hunger” due to the decision to block Israel’s aid.
Israel refused to file charges, and earlier this week went to the point where Israeli Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu claimed, despite overwhelming evidence, that “there is no hunger in Gaza.” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has condemned Elijah’s remarks as “moral attacks and public diplomatic disasters.”
Dr. Saqer said he had never seen his wife and children for three months because it was a non-stop need in the hospital. As the victim can arrive anytime, he must be nearby even during very limited downtime.
The situation in Gaza is now “more than what the human mind can grasp,” he added. Amidst the massacre and suffering, Nasser’s doctors simply rely on each other.
“We encourage each other and try to remind each other that this profession is rooted in humanity. Under no circumstances can we renounce our duties or oaths,” Dr. Sakar said.
