Breastfeeding under Israeli bombs

In March, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry declared that Israel has systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza, which are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare amounting to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the UN report stated.

These genocidal acts include “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”

Obstetric emergencies and premature births, the commission’s report stated, “have reportedly surged due to the exposure to stress and trauma, and an increase of up to 300 percent in miscarriages has been reported since 7 October 2023.”

Experts told the commission “that the long-term psychological and physical impact of such precarious conditions for women, newborns and families remains unknown.”

Under airstrikes, drone attacks, tank fire and more than six weeks of closures of all crossings into Gaza, cutting off all access to medications and medical supplies, food, fuel and other basic essentials, the state of women’s health is rapidly deteriorating.

For breastfeeding mothers in particular, it can be a challenge to keep their children nourished with an adequate milk supply while experiencing displacement and trauma.

In June 2024, the UN found that, “among households with lactating mothers, 55 percent reported health conditions impeding their ability to breastfeed and 99 percent reported difficulties developing enough breastmilk.”

“We have seen the [health] status of these mothers continually decline, the health of these babies continually being affected by lack of food, by lack of clean water, by unsafe conditions in their homes, by inability to come to the clinics and hospitals to get timely care,” says Sandra Adler Killen, an emergency and pediatric nurse and an international board-certified lactation consultant who spoke to The Electronic Intifada Podcast from Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

Killen works with the medical solidarity organization Glia in collaboration with the Gaza Infant Nutrition Alliance, a Scotland-based group focused on breastfeeding support.

She tells us the story of one of her patients – a mother who survived an airstrike on a building she lived in.

“She was injured by shrapnel in her face, in her arm and across her chest. One of the pieces of shrapnel severed one of her milk ducts, and she was leaking milk,” Killen says.

“So this mother came to me with an infected wound. I cleaned it, I provided wound care for her, and she was very worried about the absorption of lead from the weapons into her milk supply, and [if it] was it still safe to feed her precious baby.”

Killen adds that there was a large wound on her left breast. “Where in the world do we ever see something like that occur?” she asked.

Her colleagues at the hospital are also “completely drained and exhausted,” Killen says.

“They’re dealing with these exact same issues – their stress levels after having such chronic PTSD for 18 months – and yet they come every day to work serving our mothers and babies with joy, with capability, with incredibly heart-centered care,” she notes.

“It’s a tragedy beyond a tragedy that we are not giving these new mothers and this new life the kind of support that every single being that comes into this earth is entitled to.”

Produced by Tamara Nassar

Photo: Omar Ashtawy / APA images