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Sila was less than three weeks old when her mother Nariman realised she wasn’t moving.
“I woke up in the morning and told my husband that the baby hadn’t stirred for a while. He uncovered her face and found her blue, biting her tongue, with blood coming out of her mouth,” says Nariman al-Najmeh.
Sila is one of six newborns who have died from hypothermia within a two-week period in Gaza, where night-time temperatures have fallen to 7C (45F), according to the local health authorities.
Babies have an underdeveloped mechanism for maintaining their own body temperature and may develop hypothermia easily in a cold environment. Premature babies are especially vulnerable, and the medics in Gaza have observed an increase in the number of premature births during the war.
Mothers are also suffering from malnutrition, leaving them unable to breastfeed their babies sufficiently. There is also a scarcity of infant formula because of humanitarian aid deliveries being restricted.
During her 20 days of life, Sila’s home was the small and overcrowded campsite in the al-Mawasi “humanitarian area”, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in the territory have been ordered to move by the Israeli military.
The area suffers from poor infrastructure and sanitation, as well as flooding caused by both rain and waves from the Mediterranean Sea. “The cold is bitter and harsh. All night, because of the cold, we huddle together, curling up next to each other,” says Sila’s father, Mahmoud.
Then, on Sunday, another tragic case. Outside al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, a second local cameraman working with the BBC met Yehia al-Batran, who couldn’t contain his anguish as he carried his dead baby son, Jumaa. Like Sila, he was also only 20 days old and was blue with cold.
“Touch him with your hand, he’s frozen,” said Yehia. “All eight of us, we don’t have four blankets between us. What can I do? I see my children dying in front of me.”
These preventable deaths lay bare the desperate and deteriorating conditions facing families and children across Gaza.
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