(NewsNation) — Waiting in line for clean water, lugging around water jugs larger than they are and hoping for a slice of bread for the entire family, children in Gaza are living a life of survival.
That’s how one on-the-ground reporter described the life of a child in Gaza during war — one of devastation, medical suffering and pure survival.
Middle East reporter Arwa Damon, who founded the nonprofit INARA, described what she’s seen in Gaza to NewsNation on “Morning in America with Hena Doba” on Sunday, as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal reached the one-week mark.
The Emmy Award-winning journalist was in Gaza in December. She shared the story of a 2-year-old girl who is at risk of losing her limbs — and life.
Urgent need for medical care
The girl, who doctors say has a protein C deficiency leading to blood overclotting, has known war most of her life since Hamas’ attack on Gaza on Oct. 3, 2023.
“Her arms and legs are covered with gangrenous tissue. She’s at a very real risk of losing her limbs and potentially losing her life,” Damon said. “She needs an emergency medical evacuation, as do thousands of other children who are on this waiting list, but we still have not seen those starting up.”
Damon, whose nonprofit provides medical and mental health care to children impacted by war and natural disasters, is calling for urgent medical evacuations.
She thought that aid would be “speedier” after the ceasefire’s enactment. “The opposite seems to have taken place,” she said.
Israel said it is keeping Palestinians out of northern Gaza after a civilian hostage was not returned in last weekend’s hostage-prisoner exchange.
On Saturday, Hamas released four female Israeli soldiers, three of whom are a mere 20 years old and one who is 19. Israel said it was expecting the hostages to include women and children civilians.
14,000 children killed in Gaza
Images show people living on top of rubble. “It’s this sort of overwhelming sensation of, how does this even happen?” Damon said.
And in some areas: “It’s not even that a building has been reduced to rubble. It’s actually been reduced to sand.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health estimates at least 14,000 children have been killed in Gaza.
“The medications, the treatment that (the girl) needs doesn’t exist. And actually, you know, the sort of specialty care that she needs doesn’t exist in Gaza,” Damon said. “What you have is … children who get these horrific blast injuries, very complex injuries, but there isn’t the needed testing.”
There is only one CT scanner in all of Gaza City and no MRI machine, according to her experience.
“The other issue is that the rate of infection among injuries has been extremely high because children’s bodies are so weakened due to malnutrition that their body cannot fight to heal and fight off infection at the same time,” Damon said.
Patients often return because their wounds haven’t healed properly. And the mental wounds won’t heal for a long time, either.
“The fear of the drone and the bombs … these traumas are very deep and very, very ingrained and are something that really needs to be focused on in the future,” she said. “We talk a lot about Gaza’s physical rebuilding, but we also need to equally talk about Gaza’s psychological rebuilding.”
Urgent needs include proper shelter, access to clean water and access to clean bathrooms. A bed to sleep on would seem like a luxury at this stage.
“We have to recognize that the vast majority of Gaza’s children have not slept in a bed for 15 months,” Damon said. “A number of children were being asked, ‘What’s the thing you look forward to the most?’ And they were saying things like, ‘I want to sleep in a bed. I want to sleep in a room on my own. I want to be able to go to the bathroom and have a measure of privacy. I want to go back to school.’”
Stability and safety are what they hope for.
“The child is sort of entrenched in this daily struggle of survival. That’s what it’s like to be a child in Gaza right now.”
NewsNation’s Hena Doba contributed to this story.
