Rise in Malnutrition-Linked Complications in Gaza as Crisis Intensifies – MSF Official
The MSF official says patients with gunshot wounds, blast injuries, or shrapnel-related internal damage often undergo complex procedures, but their weakened nutritional state is preventing proper healing,
A growing number of patients in Gaza are suffering complications from malnutrition that are delaying recovery and worsening outcomes, as Israel’s aid blockade continues, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) official has warned.
“We’re absolutely expecting a rise in malnutrition-related pathology and challenges of treating patients who are malnourished,” Dr. Mohammed Fadlalla, MSF’s medical activity manager based in southern Gaza, told the Anadolu news agency. “We’ve already seen it. We’ve already experienced it, and the situation is only going to get worse as this blockade continues.”
Medical sources in Gaza hospitals reported four deaths since dawn on Tuesday, including two children, due to malnutrition and dehydration. pic.twitter.com/iPSJHhuDWq
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) July 22, 2025
Fadlalla said malnutrition is severely affecting trauma recovery, particularly in surgical cases, the report stated.
Patients with gunshot wounds, blast injuries, or shrapnel-related internal damage often undergo complex procedures, but their weakened nutritional state is preventing proper healing, it added.
Low Immunity
In many cases, Fadlalla noted, intestinal repairs fail days or even weeks after surgery, leading to dangerous complications such as bowel leaks and infections.
“We have patients coming in with large areas of burns on their skin, and these open wounds that develop are taking a lot longer to heal than they would because the skin and the tissue just don’t have enough amount of nutrition, don’t have enough building blocks to build itself back together,” he said.
⛔️ Empty aid trucks wait at Israel-Gaza crossing to load food, flour, and humanitarian supplies under the coordination of the World Food Program (WFP)
Israel does not allow the entry of humanitarian aid trucks into the Gaza Strip ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/SP0jsHdb3F
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) July 22, 2025
Fadlalla stressed that “We’re seeing it in increasing rates of infections because the body relies on a good nutritional status to be able to fight off infections,” adding that the “body’s natural immunity is based on having a robust nutritional status.”
The health system itself is stretched thin — not only in treating patients but also in sustaining its own workers, the report stated.
“The hospital is struggling to offer the patients enough food while they’re admitted, but it’s even having difficulty in its doctors, its nurses, and its staff having enough food to be able to take care of the patients,” said Fadlalla.
Staff Getting Weaker
The MSF official described the broader food situation in Gaza as “extremely grim” with prices continuing to rise, supplies being scarce, and even those with money often finding empty markets.
“Day by day, patients, people, staff, the public, is getting weaker, more tired, more frustrated, more disheartened,” Fadlalla said.
Calling for sustained humanitarian access and an end to delays in aid distribution, he said what is “urgently needed more than anything at this time is for a lot of aid trucks to be let in, and aid to be distributed in a way that’s devoid of cruelty, and in a distribution that’s widespread and continuous.”
We have 983 colleagues in Gaza, Palestine, who are tirelessly working through the Israeli forces’ destruction of the healthcare system in the Strip.
This is how they cared for people in the last 4 weeks: pic.twitter.com/wrtC5Xb84A
— MSF International (@MSF) July 20, 2025
Months of blockade and food scarcity, he warned, have depleted Gaza’s population, and “to reverse that is not going to be a few days or a few weeks of adequate supply.”
“It’s going to have to be a sustained allowance of adequate numbers of food trucks filled with a variety of different types of nutrients,” he emphasized.
Escalating Death Toll
According to a Gaza Health Ministry statement on Monday, the total number of Palestinians killed while attempting to access food aid has risen to 1,026 with the number of injuries amounting to over 6,536, since the end of May.
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Israel has killed more than 59,100 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured over 142,000 in Gaza since its devastating military campaign began on October 7, 2023.
(Anadolu, PC)