“I Saw Myself in Her”: MedGlobal’

“I Saw Myself in Her”: MedGlobal’s Country Representative Bears Witness to Gaza’s Hunger  

Gaza City, July 2025 – In a noisy hospital room at PFBS Hospital, Salwa Al-Tibi stood beside a mother holding her severely malnourished child. The mother was soft-spoken, her eyes hollow from exhaustion, her hands trembling as she rocked her 18-month-old son, Muhammad.  

His bones jutted out from his tiny frame, his body only 6 kilograms, having lost 3 kilograms during the current blockade. He was nearly lifeless. 

For Salwa, MedGlobal’s Palestine Country Representative, this wasn’t just another field visit. “This is my city,” she said. “That could be my neighbor. That could be me.”  

Salwa, like the families she serves, has been living under this war’s toll for over 650 days. The war has devastated Gaza’s health system, obliterated livelihoods, and plunged more than half the population into catastrophic hunger.  

Like everyone else, she has faced displacement, loss, and days without enough food. But on this visit, she was there as a humanitarian bearing witness to a mother who had already lost her husband to the war and was on the verge of losing her son to famine.   

The mother explained how Muhammad had changed in the past three months: He stopped making happy sounds, stopped laughing, started crying all day. His face grew pale and unfamiliar. When a high fever forced them to seek hospital care, doctors confirmed her worst fear – her child was becoming severely malnourished.   

“She told me, ‘We live in a tent now. We don’t get aid. We survive on what little the community kitchen offers, and now… what you are giving us.’” Salwa said, pausing, her voice heavy. “And she meant it. MedGlobal is one of the few sources of life left for her.”  

Inside the hospital room, Salwa was overwhelmed by the smell not of disease, but of   struggle. The mother explained, without flinching: “We haven’t had diapers in weeks. I use plastic bags to cover him. If I find a diaper, I wash and reuse it.”  

This, Salwa later reflected, is the new reality for thousands in Gaza.   

At MedGlobal’s Severe Acute Malnutrition Stabilization Center, where Salwa met Muhammad, teams provide therapeutic formula, medical care, and Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) to children facing severe acute malnutrition.  

Thanks to his treatment at the center, Muhammad is now stable. He drinks enriched formula daily, receives care, and is slowly gaining back strength.  

“I looked at her feeding him the RUTF sachet,” Salwa recalled. “And I realized… this is the front line. Not the rubble. Not the noise. This. A mother trying to keep her child alive with one packet of lifesaving food.”  

As Gaza spirals deeper into famine, stories like this are no longer rare. Families now line up not just for children, but for elderly family members. Hunger touches every corner of society. Even humanitarian staff doctors, nurses, and Salwa herself feel dizzy from a lack of nutrition.  

But still, the staff shows up. Every single day.  

“I carry their stories with me. They’re mine too,” Salwa said. “And I want the world to know that behind every statistic is a mother like her. And a child like Muhammad. And they’re not giving up. Neither are we.”