Help Pregnant Moms Give Birth Safely in Disasters

Healthcare services continue at the Al-Awda Health and Community Association, which is attached to the hospital in Gaza’s Deir Al Balah. ©UNFPA Palestine/Media Clinic

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestinian Territory – “There’s a severe shortage of food and essential medicines, especially during this siege,” said a doctor at Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza. “It’s had a devastating impact on pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, and children in general.”

The doctor spoke to UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, following more than two months of Israel’s devastating aid blockade on Gaza, which cut off all supplies—including food, medicine, shelter, and fuel. Reports show that one in five people is now facing starvation. For an estimated 55,000 pregnant women, each missed meal increases the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, and delivering undernourished newborns.

“We’re seeing a significant rise in low birth weight babies, directly tied to maternal malnutrition and anemia during pregnancy,” the doctor added, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.

Aya, currently living in the Deir Al-Balah displacement camp, said, “We’re surviving on food provided by community kitchens. Clinics hand out nutritional supplements to pregnant women, and I go to checkups every day because I’m scared I’ll develop vitamin deficiencies. It’s a very difficult situation.”

With almost no access to clean water or hygiene supplies, infectious and sexually transmitted diseases are reportedly on the rise—including among pregnant women, who are especially vulnerable to complications.

For $25, you can provide a woman with hygiene essentials for six months, enabling her to maintain her dignity in disaster or emergency settings.

“The lack of hygiene products is a major factor in these conditions,” the doctor said. “We’re also critically low on medical supplies, including a complete lack of maternal health medications, which has caused a rise in miscarriages.”

Relentless attacks on hospitals, health facilities and medical staff have left Gaza’s healthcare system in ruins. ©UNFPA Palestine/Media Clinic

A health system on the brink

Relentless attacks on hospitals, health facilities and medical staff have left the healthcare system in ruins. Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza – one of only eight hospitals still partially functioning – was hit by an Israeli airstrike on May 13, the fourth time it has come under fire since October 2023. Less than 24 hours later, the European Hospital in Khan Younis was bombed too.

Access to essential services is critically constrained while supplies for safe deliveries and newborn care are stuck at the border. Amid these dire conditions, almost 11,000 pregnant women are already reported to be at risk of famine, and nearly 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women will need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition over the coming months. For many, the fallout is devastating. 

For $100, you could provide 20 Emergency Birth Kits to pregnant women. Each kit has the power to save not just one life, but two. 

“I treated a woman who had struggled with infertility for nearly seven years,” continued the doctor at Al-Awda Hospital. “She finally became pregnant during the war, but due to the impacts of the siege, a lack of proper nutrition, and the trauma of bombardment when she was forced to flee, she went into premature labour and lost her baby.”

UNFPA estimates that one in three pregnancies in Gaza are now considered high-risk, and one in five newborns are born preterm or underweight, requiring specialist care that is increasingly unavailable. Only five hospitals are still providing maternity care across the entire Gaza Strip.

Displaced woman and her family members seeking healthcare. ©UNFPA Palestine/Media Clinic

A spiralling humanitarian catastrophe

UNFPA has over 190 trucks loaded with supplies that are urgently needed in Gaza, but which have been denied entry at the border during the blockade. These include mobile maternity units, ultrasounds and portable incubators that are crucial for premature newborns, hygiene and shelter supplies, and maternal health medicines, including those essential for managing obstetric emergencies.

At a maternity unit set up in a container by UNFPA, 38-year-old Wafa told UNFPA, “This is my seventh child. I became pregnant with him in March 2024, during the war. The beginning of my pregnancy was extremely difficult due to malnutrition.”

A contribution of $400 could equip midwives in Gaza with the supplies and medicines they need to guide 50 women through safe deliveries.

Displaced with her family, she explained, “I had to rely on IV fluids at Al-Awda Hospital and experienced preterm labour early in the eighth month. However, the medical team monitored my condition closely and provided consistent care, and I eventually gave birth at the hospital.”

In the first two months of the ceasefire, UNFPA estimates to have reached 146,000 women and girls with reproductive health services and  more than 100,000 people with protection services, through health facilities and mobile clinics. But as the blockade has rendered even the most essential humanitarian assistance all but impossible, the doctor at Al-Awda Hospital said, “Our deepest hope is for this war to end.”