The Electronic Intifada 29 November 2025
A premature baby receives care in an incubator at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 29 September.
APA imagesOn 29 September 2025, around 9 am, a pregnant woman, aged 19, was screaming when entering the maternity ward at Gaza City’s Al-Sahaba Medical Complex.
She was in panic, pleading with the doctors to examine her nine-month fetus.
Anhar Elmrany, a midwife at the complex, calmed the woman down and took her to examine the fetus.
Elmrany performed an ultrasound, which showed no fetal heartbeat, indicating that her baby had died.
After breaking the news to her, the woman cried – and said this was her firstborn or would-be firstborn daughter – before fainting.
Not long after, another pregnant woman, 33, entered the maternity ward.
She was pale as she implored the medical staff to check her fetus’ movement.
Elmrany examined her, but the ultrasound showed no fetal heartbeat for the mother’s would-be only son, conceived after four girls.
Both women, Elmrany said, had to run through the gunfire of Israeli tanks and then trek several kilometers to reach Al-Sahaba complex – the first traveling from al-Nasr neighborhood while the second journeyed from al-Sabra.
When Elmrany asked the two women whether they had fallen or been injured while on their way, both stated otherwise, but said they were terrified.
These women who experienced miscarriages don’t have any genetic or hereditary diseases and only miscarried during the war, Elmrany told The Electronic Intifada.
“The wife of my husband’s brother gave birth five times before and never had a miscarriage,” Elmrany said. “In this war, she miscarried.”
In the first half of 2025, 2,500 miscarriages and neonatal deaths were reported across the Gaza Strip while concurrently only 17,000 births were recorded – a 41 percent decrease from the 29,000 births recorded during the same period in 2022.
Breadwinning, displaced
Elmrany’s colleagues at Al-Sahaba complex, Dr. Sarah Zayn El-Dein, an obstetrician-gynecologist, and Seham Al-Deeb, another midwife, both agreed that stressing the mental health of a pregnant mother can negatively affect her fetus.
Most pregnant women who experience a miscarriage, Al-Deeb added, miscarry without their husbands being present.
“Because their husbands are martyrs,” Al-Deeb said.
As of 8 October 2025, one in every seven families in Gaza is now solely headed by a woman as more than 16,000 women have been widowed over the past two years.
At the complex, a woman, aged 28, was suffering from contractions at full term.
She suffered from severe malnutrition because of financial hardships after her husband sustained leg injuries in October 2024.
“He could no longer walk, so I had to fry and sell chips made from dough during pregnancy to feed my five children,” the woman said.
The woman was psychologically exhausted and physically burdened by the task of lighting a fire to fry the chips, during which she inhaled toxic fumes while pregnant.
Physical strain – which women in Gaza have endured while being displaced throughout the genocide – can cause a pregnant woman’s water, the amniotic fluid surrounding a fetus, to break.
Zayn El-Dein, the obstetrician-gynecologist, said that many pregnant women experience their water breaking “while carrying gallons of water, their belongings or even as they walk long distances.”
But displacement is only the start of their ordeal. Pregnant women’s health is harmed by the deplorable conditions they face while dispossessed.
The lack of hygiene facilities and public bathrooms – where any exist – leads to the spread of diseases and infections.
“Diseases and infections can lead to severe inflammations,” Zayn El-Dein said. “This causes high fever in pregnant mothers, which can slow fetal heartbeats and reduce movements.”
Famine
Zayn El-Dein and Al-Deeb explained that Israel’s starvation policy during the two-year genocide has severely affected pregnant women, of whom 55,000 remain suffering in the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations.
“Most mothers have severe physical weakness to the point that you can see their cheekbones protruding,” Zayn El-Dein said.
If pregnant women want to make up for this lack of food by taking supplements, Al-Sahaba complex’s pharmacy has only a single type of multivitamin.
“Essential vitamins like vitamin C, D, iron, folic acid, omega-3 and magnesium did not enter northern Gaza for too long,” Al-Deeb said. “Pregnant women are severely lacking them.”
The scarcity of food and lack of vitamins, Zayn El-Dein said, have weakened pregnant women’s immune systems and led to malnutrition and anemia, with hemoglobin levels dropping to 7-8.
On the same day in late September, around 5 pm, a mother, 19, was in labor when brought into the maternity room.
She couldn’t push and began bleeding heavily before fainting during delivery.
Zayn El-Dein revived her and administered Ringer’s lactate solution – a mixture intended to replace fluids and electrolytes – as the complex lacked proper medical resources.
Midwife Al-Deeb performed CPR on the newborn baby before transferring him to the neonatal unit.
The mother could not produce milk. Al-Deeb asked her if “she had eaten anything.”
The mother replied that she hadn’t eaten anything that day and had only managed one meal in the past few days.
Congenital deformities
The infant, placed in an incubator, was born three months early – skin and bones – weighing only 1.5 kilograms, far below the normal birth weight of between 2.5 and 4 kilograms.
From approximately 130 daily newborns in Gaza, one in five is born prematurely or with low birth weight, according to the UN.
The three-month premature baby was born with cerebral palsy and congenital deformities affecting his heart and lungs.
“There are combined causes for prematurity, low weight and congenital deformities,” said Dr. Hazem Muqat, the head of the neonatal unit, on 30 September. “But the most significant factor is the amount of toxic fallout from heavy metals Israel dropped upon our heads during the war.”
The Israeli army has dropped more than 200,000 tonnes of explosives since the beginning of the genocide, according to the Gaza government media office.
These toxic heavy metals cannot be destroyed, will never disappear and will continue to spread harmful contaminants, continuously affecting the health of Gaza’s population.
Muqat said that at Al-Sahaba Medical Complex alone, two babies were born with severe congenital deformities in the last couple of months.
The first baby was born with an imperforate anus, dying after a few days.
The second baby, Hikma Nofal, was born on 19 August with a congenital facial deformity, misaligned eyes, a cleft palate and absent lips.
Her mother – who had previously given birth to two healthy daughters – said in an interview posted on the internet that she had “inhaled toxic gases and been exposed to missile fumes” during the genocide while pregnant with Hikma.
Hikma died two months later, on 19 October.
“I had never managed such a huge number of babies before the war, all suffering from complex combined defects,” Muqat said.
Asmaa Abu Ghoush, the lead physiotherapist at Al-Sahaba complex, said: “Most cases with congenital deformities have a weak nervous system.”
Congenital conditions affecting the nervous system include, among others, cerebral palsy, scoliosis and wry neck, Abu Ghoush said.
Muqat said that he and his colleagues know how to treat all these cases, but northern Gaza lacks the facilities, medications, surgical options and medical equipment.
“We cry sometimes while seeing newborns gradually die in front of us, knowing how to save them, but unable to,” he said.
And even if they stay alive, Muqat said, “These defects will affect the babies for the rest of their lives.”
Farah Samer Zaina is a writer, translator and English lecturer from northern Gaza.
