Inside the dim confines of Kamal Adwan Hospital, north of Gaza Strip, a mother sits cradling her infant son. Hala Al-Issi’s arms, though weary, wrap tightly around six-month-old Mohamed, his tiny body fighting for breath with each shallow inhale.
The room hums with the distant sounds of medical equipment, but it is Mohamed’s labored breaths that dominate the space—a fragile, haunting rhythm that fills the silence.
This is a mother’s battlefield. Not of bombs and bullets, but of relentless medical crises and scarcity. Hala’s face, etched with exhaustion and grief, tells the story of a woman waging a desperate, daily struggle to keep her son alive.
In her lap, Mohamed stirs weakly, his frail limbs telling the tale of a child who was born into a war he never chose, into a world that has failed him at every turn.
Hala clings to hope, but the reality is harrowing. Mohamed’s suffering began long before his birth—before his first gasp of air. His mother’s body, depleted by the brutal siege and famine that grips Gaza, could not provide the nutrients her unborn child so desperately needed.
Now, her son is paying the price for a war that ravages not just the land but the very bodies of those who survive within it.
Her words, though soft, cut with the weight of unbearable guilt. “My son is a child of war,” she begins, her voice trembling. “I spent most of my pregnancy in hunger. I couldn’t give my body what it needed, couldn’t even afford to see a doctor. And now… my son is suffering.”
As Hala speaks, her eyes, dark with sleepless nights and unrelenting fear, glance down at Mohamed. His tiny chest rises and falls with difficulty, each breath a monumental effort.
She has learned to mix his medicine with water, using a syringe to feed it to him because he can no longer manage on his own. This is her routine—one of love laced with helplessness. She watches her baby’s body fight a battle that she knows it cannot win alone, not here, not in Gaza.
But Hala’s battle is not just against the invisible enemy of illness; it is against the suffocating blockade that has left Gaza’s hospitals crippled, where basic medicine and diagnostic equipment are distant dreams.
For her son, survival is a constant question mark in a land where life is so easily snatched away.
In this small hospital room, surrounded by the hum of broken systems and war’s lingering shadows, Hala holds onto her son as if her love alone can heal him. And in her arms, Mohamed continues to fight—fragile, innocent, and too young to understand that the world outside has forgotten him.
Famine and Malnutrition
Mohamed’s story, like that of so many children in Gaza, is one of tragic consequence—his life shaped by circumstances far beyond his control. His struggle began long before he ever entered the world. Hala, unable to access proper nutrition or medical care during her pregnancy, watched helplessly as the war and its suffocating blockade eroded her body’s ability to nourish her unborn child.
As she reflects on those harrowing months, the pain in her voice is unmistakable.
“During most of my pregnancy, we were living in famine,” Hala recalls. “I couldn’t get enough vitamins, couldn’t eat properly, and there was no way to see a doctor. All of it—everything I couldn’t give myself—passed on to my son.”
The result was devastating. Malnutrition caused Hala’s body to break down essential proteins, which led to her liver producing ammonia instead.
This toxic compound passed to Mohamed in the womb, and by the time he was born, his liver was damaged, unable to produce the proteins necessary for survival.
To make matters worse, the lack of oxygen during his birth led to brain damage, severely compromising his health from the start.
In Gaza, where medical care is limited and supplies are scarce, Mohamed’s condition is far from unique.
Hala’s guilt, however, is overwhelming. “I keep blaming myself. I ask, is it my fault my son is suffering? But how could I give him what I never had? This isn’t just my failure—it’s the failure of a world that left us to starve.”
Yet, despite her guilt, Hala knows there was nothing she could have done differently. Mohamed’s life, and the lives of countless other children in Gaza, hangs in the balance of a world that continues to turn away from their suffering.
Medical Crisis
Kamal Adwan Hospital, where Hala and Mohamed are fighting their battle, is just one of the many hospitals in Gaza that has been crippled by war.
More than 34 hospitals across the Strip have been forced out of operation due to the unrelenting Israeli bombardment and the suffocating blockade.
For Hala, this means that even the most basic treatments for her son are hard to come by.
The doctors do what they can, but their hands are tied. Gaza’s hospitals lack the diagnostic tools to accurately assess Mohamed’s condition, and the medicine needed to treat him is running out. The one substance that helps Mohamed’s brain receive oxygen, sodium benzoate, is now only available from a single shop in all of northern Gaza—and even then, in quantities far too small to sustain his treatment.
Wissam Al-Sikni, the Director of Public Relations at Kamal Adwan Hospital, explains the dire situation. “We’re working with very limited resources,” he says, his voice heavy with frustration.
“The medical system in Gaza is on the verge of collapse. For patients like Mohamed, who need special immune treatments and proper nutrition, the supplies just aren’t there.”
Al-Sikni’s words reflect the reality that Hala lives every day. The lack of food and medical supplies is exacerbating the suffering of Gaza’s children, who need vitamins, minerals, and specialized care to survive.
For Mohamed, the absence of specialized milk is life-threatening. Without access to this essential nutrition, his chances of survival dwindle by the day.
As Hala sits in the hospital, her son’s fragile life clinging to the sliver of hope that remains, she contemplates the future—one filled with uncertainty, fear, and the overwhelming question of whether she will wake up one day to find that the last of his medicine has run out.
For now, all she can do is hold Mohamed close, hoping that the world will finally take notice, before it’s too late.
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