With Nutrition Supplies Running Out, MedGlobal Urg

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 12, 2025

MEDIA CONTACT:
Prapti Ajmera, West End Strategy Team
[email protected] | 202-867-5231

With Nutrition Supplies Running Out, MedGlobal Urges Action to End Gaza Blockade and Facilitate Humanitarian Access

With President Donald Trump set to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates from May 13 to 16 and the UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, May 14, to discuss the crisis, MedGlobal urges US, Israeli and international authorities to end the devastating months-long aid blockade to Gaza. 

For many months, civilians in Gaza have experienced violence, displacement, psychological trauma and extreme deprivation. People are now starving, and the medicines and therapeutic formulas required to treat malnourished children will start running out this month if more aid is not allowed in.

New data released today finds 470,000 people in Gaza are facing famine conditions—a tripling since the last assessment in October. 70,000 children are acutely malnourished, including 14,000 suffering from the most severe form and at imminent risk of death without therapeutic treatment. The population in famine conditions is nearly on par with the figures seen in Somalia’s 2011 famine, which ultimately killed 250,000 people. Half of all deaths during that famine had occurred by the time the famine was officially declared.

“We are seeing…children who cannot get even one full meal a day, and mothers forced to split one piece of bread among five kids. People walk for hours just to reach food distribution points, and many go back empty-handed because there simply isn’t enough. We are seeing children with wasted bodies and swollen bellies from malnutrition,” said Rana Soboh, MedGlobal’s Nutrition Officer in North Gaza. 

Warring parties are obligated to allow and facilitate humanitarian access and to protect civilians and humanitarian workers. Organizations such as MedGlobal have the capacity, trust and track record to provide life-saving medical and nutritional care. A newly proposed US and Israeli aid distribution plan seeks to centralize and militarize food and supply delivery in Gaza. If such a plan were to replace existing humanitarian actors, many thousands would be excluded from essential humanitarian assistance, either from fear of receiving aid under the gun or from the inadequacy of distributions that cannot replace medical and therapeutic nutritional care.

“Humanitarian medical aid cannot be withheld as a bargaining chip,” said Joseph Belliveau, Executive Director of MedGlobal. “One in five people is in famine conditions, starving while food sits at the border. Civilians are suffering the brunt of this conflict and organizations like MedGlobal have demonstrated that they can and are providing life-saving care. Lifting aid restrictions is the most straightforward and humane way to ensure that civilians, including starving children, get the medical attention they need. President Trump should use his upcoming trip to end this blockade and facilitate the work of the humanitarians who are already here.”

According to the United Nations, at least 66,000 children in Gaza are suffering from severe malnutrition due to the blockade. Nearly all aid kitchens have shut down. Since October, over 57 people have died from starvation—numbers that will rise rapidly if the blockade and restrictions on humanitarian organizations are not lifted.

“We regularly treated children who were slowly starving,” said Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon who recently returned from volunteering on a MedGlobal medical mission to Gaza, serving at Nasser Hospital. “They were surviving on small amounts of food every few days, with almost no protein. The international community must no longer allow Israel to withhold food from Gaza’s one million children.”

President Trump’s upcoming Middle East visit presents a historic opportunity to lift the blockade and restore the ability of humanitarians to provide the medical and nutritional relief so desperately needed in Gaza.

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About MedGlobal

MedGlobal is a humanitarian nonprofit organization that provides emergency medical response and health programs to build resilience among vulnerable communities around the world. The organization’s health programs support victims of crisis and conflict, refugees, internally displaced persons, and marginalized communities in disaster-affected and low-resource settings.