GENEVA: Malnutrition among pregnant and lactating women in the Gaza Strip is having a “devastating domino effect” on thousands of newborns, the UN said on Tuesday.
UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, reported an alarming increase in the number of babies born weighing less than 2.5 kilogrammes (5.5 pounds) in the Palestinian Territories.
UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram told a news briefing in Geneva that “malnourished mothers” give birth to underweight or early kids, who either “die… or survive, only to face malnutrition themselves or potential lifelong medical complications,” speaking from central Gaza.
She also stated that infants with low birth weight were around 20 times more likely to die than infants with normal weight.
Before the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza, 5% of newborns born in Gaza were underweight, an average of 250 babies each month, according to numbers from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the UN regards as reliable.
Despite fewer births in the first half of 2025, 10% of babies were born underweight – approximately 300 babies each month.
And from July to September, three months before the fragile ceasefire on October 10, the figure jumped to 460 babies every month, according to Ingram.
“Low birth weight is generally caused by poor maternal nutrition, increased maternal stress, and limited antenatal care,” she told me.
“In Gaza, we witness all three, and the response is not moving fast enough nor at the scale required.”