UNICEF Reports Gaza Infants Sharing Oxygen Masks As Israel Blocks Equipment

UNICEF spokesperson James Elder on Tuesday stated that Israel has repeatedly rejected requests for transferring incubators from an evacuated hospital in North Gaza. He added that this has created a strain on hospitals in the southern region forcing newborn babies to share oxygen masks, Reuters reported. 

Reports suggest that Israel’s assault on Gaza city over the past month has shut down hospitals in the North while further aggravating the situation in the South. According to the World Health Organization, one in five newborns in Gaza are premature and underweight, a consequence of increased stress and malnutrition among pregnant mothers.

"We've been trying to recover incubators from a hospital that was evacuated in the north, and we've had four missions denied simply to get those incubators," Elder told Reuters by video link from Gaza, referring to supplies now stuck at the damaged Al-Rantissi Children's Hospital in Gaza City.

Elder, after visiting a hospital in the South, said that  "in one of the paediatric rooms, there were three babies and three mums on a single bed, one source of oxygen, and the mothers would rotate the oxygen 20 minutes to each child," he said. "This is the level of desperation mums have now got to," he added. 

UNICEF has called for the evacuation of ill and premature babies remaining in northern Gaza hospitals. The WHO transferred three of them last week to a hospital further south, but said one died before the mission. Only 14 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are currently even partially functional, according to the WHO.