KUALA LUMPUR: ActionAid International says stress and food shortages are leading to an increase in miscarriages among pregnant women in the Gaza Strip.
ActionAid International, an international non-governmental organization that works for a world free of poverty and injustice, said doctors in the few remaining functioning maternity wards in the Gaza Strip had found a rise in the number of miscarriages.
Officials at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, the only hospital in central Gaza currently offering obstetric services such as births and Caesarean sections, said they were seeing an increase in pregnant women visiting the hospital with severe bleeding and other complications, the newspaper said.
“Food shortages, constant danger and the stress of displacement are taking a huge toll on pregnant women,” it said in a statement.
Dr Raed Al-Sauj, head of the obstetrics and gynecology department at a hospital run by ActionAid's Gaza partner Al-Awda, said they were now delivering 40 to 50 babies a day despite having just 35 beds.
“Miscarriages occur for a variety of reasons. Fatigue among pregnant women due to evacuation is one of them, but malnutrition is also a major cause.”
“Some women come home with excessive bleeding – cases of placental abruption, placenta previa or postpartum hemorrhage. This obviously poses a great risk to the patient,” Al-Sauj said in a video sent to Action Aid International.
Meanwhile, Dr Yasmin, head of admissions and obstetrics at the hospital, said staff have seen many cases of women losing their unborn babies.
“Many women have lost (fetuses) as a result of direct exposure to the bombings. A woman is pregnant and gets injured. She bleeds on the second day or the same day. She is taken to the operating theatre. This happens a lot here,” she said.
Dr Yasmin also noted the lack of enough food: according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 95 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza face severe food poverty.
Meanwhile, Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine, said pregnant women in the Gaza Strip not only experience the constant stress and trauma of living in a war zone, but also have little to eat.
“Given the dire conditions pregnant women in Gaza are forced to endure, the rise in miscarriages is heartbreaking but not surprising.”
“What they and all other people in Gaza urgently need is a permanent and immediate ceasefire,” she said.
