Gaza: Food, Water, and Medicine Priorities for Children Once Hostilies Paused in Gaza

GAZA (Jan. 18, 2025) — Getting food, water, and medical supplies to children in Gaza will be priorities for Save the Children once the pause in hostilities comes into effect on Sunday, with preparations underway in coordination with other aid organizations to deliver supplies as quickly as possible once entry points are reopened and security guaranteed. 

Getting winter supplies waiting at Gaza's entry points to children and families will also be critical, with rain and cold temperatures expected for at least another two months.

Nearly all 1.1 million children in Gaza—about half of the population – are in urgent need of food, with many surviving on just one meal a day after 15 months of war. 

Many have been unable to get medical care with healthcare facilities destroyed, supplies exhausted given restrictions on their entry, and not one of Gaza's 36 hospitals fully functioning. Gaza's six public community mental health centers and its one inpatient psychiatric hospital are also no longer functioning.

Save the Children, which has been assisting children and families in the occupied Palestinian territory for more than 70 years, has increased its workforce in Gaza over the past year and is on standby to supply and distribute essential aid as well as provide medical assistance in its two primary health care centers with explorations underway to set up more medical facilities.

If conditions allow, medical teams will provide mobile vaccination services, support for pregnant and breastfeeding women and caregivers, and distribute ready-to-use infant formula for babies unable to breastfeed. 

Supplying water via trucks and installing latrines in shelters will also be critical to help stave off dehydration and stop any further spread of disease.

With potentially as many as 96% of schools damaged or destroyed, according to a September update by the Education Cluster, Save the Children stands ready to support the rebuilding of Gaza's education system, while also setting up temporary learning spaces in pre-existing shelters as well as mobile play and learning options to assist children and families on the move as they head back to their homes. This will include distributing recreational kits for children containing puzzles, stationery, coloring and story books.

Over the past 15 months children have witnessed and lived through experiences that no child should ever face, so Save the Children will increase its Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) services to children but also to support the wider population. This will include individual and group counseling sessions. 

Save the Children will also be providing protection support through case management, connecting children with the support they need to keep them safe. This includes supporting some of the more than 17,000 unaccompanied and separated children find surviving family members.

Save the Children will be working with the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations and local partners to deliver aid as quickly as possible. However, this does need the lifting of all restrictions on the entry of goods into Gaza as well as on the movement of goods across the Strip, opening of all crossings, security for staff delivering aid, supplies of fuel and commercial goods to stock local markets, and repairs to roads and infrastructure widely destroyed across the Gaza Strip.

Javier Garcia, team leader for Save the Children International in Gaza, said: 

"We, along with thousands of families and the entire aid community, are hoping against hope this pause holds and becomes a definitive ceasefire, and that critical essential aid can start to get into Gaza at the levels children and families need. We know there are hurdles to overcome and it will take time to get supplies flowing again, but there is no alternative. Children that remain in Gaza after months of bloodshed have a right to a brighter future and deserve their childhoods back.  

"If and as aid entry into Gaza increases and our programming scales up, we will be looking for every opportunity to provide the aid that children and families in Gaza so desperately need. However, increased access in and across Gaza and guaranteed safety for humanitarian workers will be critical in enabling us to deliver lifesaving aid to children and their families wherever they are. 

"Anything less than a definitive ceasefire and comprehensive accountability falls abysmally short of the safety, assistance and broader rights Palestinian children need, deserve and are entitled to - and means the international community is failing them yet again."

Over the past 15 months more than 17,818 children in Gaza have been killed, according to the latest figures from the Government Media Office in Gaza. The pace and scale of hostilities, along with the decimation of hospitals and search and rescue capacities, means the actual number is undoubtedly even higher. Thousands of others—an average of 15 children a day—have suffered life-altering injuries including the loss of limbs, sight and hearing. 

With a ceasefire and sustained access, Save the Children will set up more temporary learning spaces until schools can be rebuilt, and provide non-formal education including catch-up classes, remedial education, and distance learning. This will include awareness sessions to help keep children safe from the extensive unexploded ordnance littered across Gaza to which they are uniquely vulnerable given their natural curiosity and likelihood of picking up or playing in contaminated areas.

Save the Children will also be providing cash assistance to at least 35,000 households so they can buy the supplies they so desperately need once available. 

Save the Children has been providing essential services and support to Palestinian children since 1953 and has had a permanent presence in the occupied Palestinian territory since 1973.  

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