Six-year-old Fadi al-Zant is acutely malnourished, his ribs protruding beneath his leathery skin, his eyes sunken, as he lies in bed at Kamal Adwan Hospital in famine-stricken northern Gaza.
Fadi’s skinny legs can no longer support him enough to walk.
Photographs of Fadi from before the war show a smiling, healthy-looking child, standing in blue jeans next to his taller, combed-haired twin. A short video clip shows him dancing at a wedding with a little girl.
Fadi suffers from cystic fibrosis. Before the conflict, he took medication that his family can no longer find and ate a carefully balanced variety of foods that were no longer available in the Palestinian enclave, according to his mother, Shimaa al-Zant.
“His condition is getting worse. He’s getting weaker. He’s still losing the ability to do things,” she said in a video obtained by Reuters from a freelancer. “He can’t stand anymore. If I help him up, he falls right over.”
Malnourished Palestinian boy Fadi al-Zant lies on a bed at Kamal Adwan Hospital amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in northern Gaza
Malnourished Palestinian boy Fadi al-Zant lies on a bed at Kamal Adwan Hospital, March 10. REUTERS/Osama Abu Rabee to buy licensing rights.
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More than five months after Israel’s ground and air campaign launched in response to an October 7 attack by Hamas, there are widespread shortages of food, medicine and clean water in Gaza, doctors and aid agencies say.
Kamal Adwan Hospital, which cares for Fadi, also treated most of the 27 children who died of malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Others died at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, also in the north, the ministry said, and in the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge from the Israeli offensive, according to the UN aid agency.
Reuters last week saw 10 severely malnourished children during a visit to the al-Awda health center in Rafah, arranged with nursing staff who allowed the news agency unrestricted access to the ward. Reuters was unable to independently verify the deaths reported by the ministry.
