Over the past four months, nearly 19,000 children in Gaza were hospitalized for acute malnutrition due to Israel’s starvation campaign, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has reported.

This is almost double the number of acute malnutrition cases among children in Gaza in the first six months of 2024, the agency reports; at that time, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) head had said that northern Gaza was under a “full-blown famine” because of Israel’s brutal humanitarian aid blockade.

UNRWA reported on Sunday that one of their only remaining functional health centers has only six boxes of baby formula left to distribute, despite thousands of babies in need — and that was the first shipment of baby food the agency reviewed in three months, the group said.

“It has been 14 months. People here really are surviving on bread, lentils, food in tin cans. We are not seeing fruit and vegetables around. We are not seeing people with families and children get the nutrients that they need,” said UNRWA emergency officer Louise Wateridge last week.

Israel’s aid blockade is causing health effects that will compound for decades to come. The UN Population Fund for Palestine recently reported that there are 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza who lack essentials like food, water and hygiene supplies. According to the group, 8,000 of these women are among the 345,000 people in Gaza facing “famine-like conditions.”