The Grave Long-Term Effects of the Gaza Malnutrition Crisis

10-year-old Ubayda al-Qara, who became paralyzed by Israeli attacks, also struggles with malnutrition and a skin condition in Khan Yunis, Gaza on July 28, 2025.Photograph: Hani Alshaer/Getty Images

The moment Merry Fitzpatrick realized that Gaza’s malnutrition crisis had progressed to a newer and deadlier phase was when surgeons at the few hospitals still operational on the Strip reported that wounds were no longer closing.

“There’s so much traumatic injury, like blast wounds and broken bones,” says Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University. “But they’re not healing, because people don’t have the nutrients to build the collagen necessary to close them. So wounds that are a month, even two months old, still look as fresh as if they had occurred in the last week.”

According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, malnutrition deaths in the territory since ...