Shameen Suleman
Human Rights Activist | RebuildGaza24 Co-founder
Pregnancy in Gaza is not only an emergency, but also a life-threatening situation for both the mother and child, given that the health sector is shattered, there are no safe hospitals, and medicines are near inexistent.
With an estimated180 babies born every day in Gaza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are slim chances that the babies, and even their mothers, would make it. In that sense, death has become the norm for the most fragile segments of society: Women and children.
Between the “israeli occupation’s” bombardment and lack of medication, baby formula, nutrition, hygiene, and even a proper delivery place, it is hard to imagine that there is hardly any survival chance if you are pregnant, in Gaza.
According to health organisations, and even doctors on the ground, most of the deliveries take place outside functioning hospitals, with little or no access to sterile equipment or essential drugs, leading to complications that normally require emergency obstetric care such as blood transfusions, surgery, or antibiotics.
When these services are unavailable, otherwise survivable complications too often become tragedies for the near 50,000 pregnant Palestinian women currently trapped inside the fully-sieged Strip. It becomes more eminent for more than 5,000 due to give birth in the coming month, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Nearly two yeas of bombardment, displacement, and restrictions on aid have shattered Gaza’s health system. Maternity wards have repeatedly been forced to close or drastically reduce services. Even Gaza’s main maternity hospital in Rafah has, at times, stopped admissions due to direct attacks and shortages. Clean water is scarce, antibiotics and anaesthetics are running out, and incubators often have to support several premature babies at once.
Tens of thousands of pregnant women in Gaza are malnourished, fatigued and face a high risk of miscarriage, haemorrhage, infection, and critically low birthweights when it comes to newborns. In fact, some 5,500 newborns in the first half of 2025 were prematurely born, underweight, or required intensive care, as per UNFPA, drawing a stark reflection of the conditions in Gaza.
Various women-related NGOs working inside Gaza, regularly document how women are banned by the israeli occupation from accessing critical medical treatment abroad, and with no access to ambulances or fit hospitals, local midwives and women-led groups struggle to fill the gap with ill-equipped mobile clinics. Their call is simple: Women must be given access to care, and they immediate resources to survive are a must.
Meanwhile, there is a rise in serious congenital anomalies—babies born with life-threatening deformities or conditions that might have been prevented or treated if antenatal care and diagnostic services were functioning, according to doctors inside Gaza, including Dr. Mounir El Bursh, the head of the Hospitals sector across all of the Gaza Strip.
While more research is needed, clinicians consistently link these cases to the combined effects of malnutrition, toxic exposure from bombardments, and the collapse of maternal healthcare.
Rebuild Gaza 24 is dedicating this 24-hour campaign to pregnant women and newborns—those for whom minutes and milligrams can be the difference between life and death.
For a mother in labour, help might mean a sterile scalpel, a unit of blood, or a tank of fuel for the ambulance. For a premature baby, help might mean one bottle of antibiotics, a few days on oxygen, or a blanket to keep warm.
Your donation this weekend turns into those very things fast, direct, and life-saving.
If you have read this far, thank you. Please give what you can, share this appeal, and stand with Gaza’s mothers so that birth can be a beginning again.
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