A doctor has detailed what exactly happens to a human body when it’s dying from starvation, in a plea for Israel to allow aid into Gaza.
Dr Amir Khan goes through step by step how the body begins to break down in the days and hours leading up to death, adding: ‘It’s not peaceful, it’s not quick, it’s a slow, lonely descent into silence.’
The NHS worker told viewers: ‘This is a reel I wish I didn’t have to make, but it’s so important to speak up and for people to know this.’
It comes as the United Nation’s food agency, the World Food Programme (WFP), said almost a third of people in Gaza are ‘not eating for days’ and describing the crisis has having reached ‘new and astonishing levels of desperation’.
The WFP said 470,000 people are expected to have faced ‘catastrophic hunger’ between May and September this year.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Gaza is suffering ‘man-made mass starvation’ because of an Israeli blockade on aid to the enclave.
Israel has denied any responsibility, with some ministers and officials even suggesting there is no hunger in Gaza – but has today allowed foreign aid to be parachuted into the territory.
The UN has documented the deaths of dozens of people from malnutrition this week, and says others have collapsed in the streets while trying to reach food.
What happens to the body when it’s dying of starvation?
In his post Dr Khan explained that when a person is starving the body first uses up glucose, ‘its quickest fuel’.
He added: ‘That’s gone in about 24 hours. You feel shaky, dizzy, cold, your stomach cramps, and worse than the hunger is the exhaustion, like your bones are filled with sand.
‘Next, the body burns fat. You lose weight rapidly, your cheeks sink, your clothes hang off you, but your brain is still alert and now it’s panicking.
‘You can’t stop thinking about food, the smell of bread, the memory of taste. It becomes torture.’
He said the body then starts ‘eating muscle, including the heart’.
‘You feel weak, too tired to sit up, your legs tremble, every movement is an effort,’ he said.
‘You speak less and then you stop speaking altogether. Your brain begins to starve, confusion, hallucinations.
‘You see things that aren’t there, you forget who you are. It’s terrifying. You feel freezing cold, even in the heat.’
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After this your skin breaks down, he explained, and ‘your body hurts to lie on but you can’t sit up’.
‘In the final stages, organs shut down, breathing becomes shallow, heartbeat slows, consciousness fades,’ he added.
He concludes the reel by telling viewers: ‘Children in Gaza are feeling this right now. This isn’t happening in a [natural] famine, this is not a natural death, it’s a man-made one, and it’s preventable.
‘Let aid in, don’t look away, don’t wait for history to judge, speak now.’
UN secretary says international community is ‘indifferent’ and ‘lacks compassion’
Today, UN secretary general António Guterres criticised the international community for turning a blind eye to the suffering of starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, calling it a ‘moral crisis that challenges the global conscience’.
‘I cannot explain the level of indifference and inaction we see by too many in the international community – the lack of compassion, the lack of truth, the lack of humanity,’ he said in a speech via videolink to Amnesty International’s global assembly.
The UK government is among those criticised by campaigners for not taking a stronger stance against Israel’s actions, and for continuing to allow the supply of arms to its military.
They were, however, among 28 countries to have signed a letter condemning the ‘the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food’.
The statement signed by the 28 foreign ministers added: ‘The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazan’s of human dignity.’
The statement said Israel’s war on Gaza ‘must end now’.
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