In the paediatric intensive care unit of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, the machines hum louder than the children. 

Six-year-old Saif Abu Warda lies motionless, his chest rising only because of a ventilator. A tracheostomy tube juts from his throat, the narrow passageway through which oxygen reaches his paralysed lungs. 

His father, Kamal Abu Warda, recalls the morning of July 27 when their lives changed forever. 

“Saif’s fever rose sharply, and then, just as suddenly, his limbs slackened. He couldn’t move his hands or feet,” he says, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “Tests revealed a virus attacking his nervous system, causing paralysis and breathing difficulties.” 

What began as a fever quickly escalated into acute soft paralysis, a condition now surging across Gaza’s 2.3 million besieged residents. 

Dr. Mohammed Hajjo, head of intensive care at Al-Rantisi, explains that acute flaccid paralysis is typically a symptom of Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which the immune system attacks peripheral nerves following infection. 

“At first, he could hear us, nod his head, and communicate with facial expressions,” Kamal says. “But his condition deteriorated. Severe brain inflammation affected his memory; now he barely remembers anything.” 

Saif is one of roughly a hundred cases documented in recent months, a number that Gaza’s doctors see not as an anomaly but as the symptom of the sealed territory, gutted hospitals, and starvation in children caused by Israel’s blockade. 

The World Health Organisation warns that Gaza’s health system is “at breaking point.” Only a fraction of hospitals and primary care facilities are functional. Hundreds of assaults on medical facilities have been recorded since October 2023. 

The collapse of medicine collides with the collapse of sanitation. 

OCHA reports that around ninety percent of WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) assets across Gaza have been destroyed or damaged. In June, ninety-three percent of households reported water insecurity. 

The result is an environment where infections thrive and post-infectious syndromes such as Guillain-Barré. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has so far reported three deaths linked to the syndrome. 

‘We live among garbage and sewage’

Kamal, displaced since the early days of the war, says: “We live among garbage and sewage. We’ve lived in tents since our displacement. Garbage fills the streets, sewage water floods the roads, and the canned food we’re forced to eat—if found—harms our children more than it nourishes them.” 

At Al-Rantisi, Dr Mohammed Hajjo has tracked the rise of the paralysis cases. “Usually, this syndrome affects a very small percentage of people worldwide,” he tells TRT World. 

“We’re seeing a notable increase in Gaza, with about 60 cases among adults and 40 among children recently, exceeding normal annual rates,” he adds. 

He links the spike not only to infections but to weakened immunity from malnutrition, contaminated water, poor sanitation, and the stress of war and siege, all consistent with WHO and OCHA warnings. 

The malnutrition crisis, caused by Israel’s blocking of humanitarian and food supplies, has sharpened dramatically through 2025. 

Nearly one in five children under five is malnourished in Gaza City. Rates of Global Acute Malnutrition have tripled since June, making Gaza City the worst-hit area in the enclave.

WHO reported a surge of malnutrition-related deaths in July 2025 alone — 63 of the year’s 74 by late July, including 24 children under five — with many patients arriving dead on arrival or dying shortly after, showing clear signs of severe wasting. 

The IPC, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, warned in late July that acute malnutrition doubled in Khan Younis between May and July.

Acute malnutrition rose by 70 percent in Deir al-Balah.

Gaza City breached famine thresholds for acute malnutrition.

According to UNICEF figures, more than 5,000 children were diagnosed with malnutrition in May 2025 alone — nearly 50% higher than April and 150 percent above February, when a short ceasefire briefly allowed more aid in.

The wider picture presses in on the wards. 

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) describes “mass starvation”. Between June 7 and July 24 2025, two MSF clinics near US-run GHF food sites received 1,380 wounded people, 28 bodies, and 174 gunshot victims. 

Families running out of time

Kamal has been trying since day one to get his son a referral abroad, but he remains trapped. “My son needs an MRI for accurate diagnosis,” he says. “Every passing day worsens his condition. I fear losing him, like I lost my other child in a car accident months before the war.” 

For patients like Saif, essential treatments for Guillain-Barré no longer exist in Gaza.  

“Treatments like IVIG and plasma needed to treat exchange procedures aren’t available. Diagnostic laboratory tools, including MRI machines, were destroyed by bombing,” Dr Hajjo says. 

The trajectory is brutal. Paralysis often begins in the legs, rises to the chest, impacting breathing, and only mechanical breath keeps the child alive. Globally, seven to eight per cent of such cases die within six months. In Gaza, the odds are worse. 

Other families share the same fate. 

In another ICU bed, Lara, eight years old, collapsed suddenly on her way to the bathroom; two months later, she lies paralysed, her widowed mother tending her while caring for four other children, including a toddler with brain atrophy. 

“I don’t want to take her home, unable to move,” she tells TRT World. “I want her to return as she was, play with friends and siblings.” 

Even young adults are not spared. 

Ghassan Al-Jayeh, 28, a married father with a pregnant wife, went from tingling in his hands and feet to near-complete paralysis in four days. 

“I fell to the ground, unable to move my body,” he tells TRT World. “In four days, I developed almost complete paralysis; only weak neck movement remains,” he adds between laboured breaths. After 15 days in the hospital,  he says, “capabilities are limited, medications are almost non-existent, and there’s no accurate diagnosis.” 

“All our diagnoses rely on clinical examination,” Dr. Hajjo says. Even fuel for the ventilators is scarce. 

For Kamal, the waiting is its own kind of paralysis. 

“They allow me to visit him for just 30 minutes daily,” he says, standing outside the ICU. “I spend the rest waiting for them to open the door, waiting to see him breathe, waiting for him to come back to me.”

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.