WARNING: This article contains information and pictures that readers may find distressing.
Premature babies at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital are being wrapped in foil and placed next to hot water in desperate efforts to keep them alive.
Gaza’s largest hospital is functioning on the limited supply of fuel reserves remaining, leaving it unable to operate.
Underweight, premature babies are pictured lying in rows on hospital beds lined with foil to try to keep in the warmth.
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The small babies, only weighing a few pounds each, should all be incubators, but instead, are in risk of dying of cold.
The survival efforts come just days after Al-Shifa was forced to move babies from neonatal incubators to a different part of the hospital.
Doctors have said several babies have died in intensive care and the nursery amid Israel’s bombardment and blockade of Gaza.
A reporter for the Al Arabiya network who was inside the hospital told CNN people were trapped inside, too scared to leave as heavy fighting continued outside.
“There is no more water, food, milk for children and babies… the situation in the hospital is catastrophic,” the director of the medical centre, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told CNN.
Meanwhile, Dr Medhat Abbas, director of AL-SHifa Hospital and a top official at the health ministry in Gaza said four of the premature babies are without mothers, as they were born through emergency caesareans as their mothers were dying.
“To sustain their lives, they need the same temperature as the mother. This can only happen with incubators which keep the babies warm and which provide a special light to protect them from jaundice and artificial respiration if it’s needed,” he said.
“Our doctors have gathered them in ordinary beds and put aluminium foil around to keep them warm. It’s becoming colder here in Gaza, and for that reason, without proper temperature control, some of them could die.
“Four of those babies lost their mothers. They were born through c-section as their mothers were dying. They have to make it through without their mothers and without electricity.”