What is life like for children in Gaza?
Families camped in rubble in Rafah, Gaza. Bisan Owda/Save the Children.
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Imagine it this way...you haven't even been born yet.
Your mother is so stressed out from the constant bombardments and the constant fighting, the constant displacements, the lack of food, the lack of sanitation, the lack of shelter that she goes into premature labour.
You get born into the one NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] in the entirety of Gaza, where you go into an incubator and you share space with three other babies who are also prematurely born, not getting enough support.
And whilst you are fighting for your life, your father and your siblings are standing in a bread line hoping to get some bread so they can have something to eat today.
A young boy holds some bread on a street in North Gaza. Bisan Owda/ Save the Children
Unfortunately, your siblings are sick with bloody diarrhoea because there's no sanitation in the shelter. So they're also dealing with that while they wait in a queue that can take hours and hours to get bread.
And even at the end of it, they may not get any food. So they go back to the shelter to deal with the bloody diarrhoea on an empty stomach.
But really, at the end of the day, it's okay because, you know, the shelter that they're staying in gets hit by a missile. So your father and siblings are dead.
You're in the NICU, and your mother is sleeping on a tiny mattress on the floor, hoping that you can get discharged just so you can go home to die.
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Blog based on an audio diary by Matt Sugrue, Director of Program Operations at Gaza Response, Save the Children.
