'Heartbreaking': Miscarriages at Gaza hospital rise due to stress, lack of food and injuries

Patients at the hospital have also described the terror of giving birth.

Fadwa, 30, has been displaced and gave birth by emergency Caesarean Section under bombardment from the Israeli military.

"I felt so scared as I tried breastfeeding my newborn, I was even shivering. As a result, my baby would not latch. Eventually he stopped taking my milk. I had to resort to formula, which was not an easy task."

"In order to make the formula last longer, I had to use less than the recommended amount. I barely had access to one tin of formula per week. And sometimes once every two weeks. I would ration the amount to make more bottles," she said.

With heavy bombardment continuing across the Gaza Strip, many women are finding it difficult — if not impossible — to get to the hospital, which is putting lives at risk, doctors have warned.

"Sometimes they barely make it in an ambulance. Which causes the patient to come in with further complications," said Dr Raed Al Saudi, Head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat. 

Many women who were booked in for planned C-sections due to underlying health conditions or other issues are now displaced and so cannot attend.

"We have cases of women coming from their homes with excessive bleeding. Cases of abruptio placentae or placenta previa, or postpartum bleeding. This obviously poses a great risk on the patient."

He added: "We also see older women. These women suffer constant bleeding and would need surgeries. They would need curettage and biopsy operations. We do not have doctors to read the results of these pathology biopsies. And that, of course, is a major problem."

With no other maternity hospital operating in middle Gaza, Dr Al Saudi and his team have been staying in the hospital ever since the beginning of the war in October.

"We do not leave the hospital. Except when [we] leave for a day every 10 to 14 days. We have been working non-stop, for the past seven months without a break," he said.

"The reason we had this work system in our hospital is because there are no other hospitals. That is what prompted us to do our jobs as doctors and residents of the hospital around the clock."

Director of nursing, Jihad Al Madhoun, said staff are now under psychological and mental stress and pressure, which is compounded by the fact that they are not able to see their families.

He said: "We faced many issues, as a result of the insufficient power supply... We do not have electricity. We had to use generators instead. Generators are defective and unreliable. They suddenly malfunctioned or stopped, and it was difficult to find spare parts."

ActionAid Ireland CEO, Karol Balfe, said staff at its partner hospital Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, are reporting that women are now exhausted, starving and weak.

She said: “It is heartbreaking but hardly surprising that the number of miscarriages is rising considering the atrocious conditions pregnant women in Gaza are being forced to endure. Not only are they experiencing the constant stress and trauma of living in a warzone, where nowhere is safe, but they have hardly anything to eat.” 

"Doctors are doing their very best to treat the pregnant women who come to them, many in a critical condition, but they are running dangerously low on the vital medicines they need to do their jobs — all while being utterly exhausted, overstretched and traumatised themselves. What they, and everyone else in Gaza, urgently need is a permanent and immediate ceasefire.”