A 20-year-old Palestinian woman suffering from severe malnutrition who was evacuated from Gaza to Italy this week has died, a hospital in Pisa has said.
The woman, named by Italian media as Marah Abu Zuhri, arrived in Pisa on an Italian government humanitarian flight on Wednesday night. Zuhri had come to Italy with her mother on one of three Italian air force flights that arrived this week with a total of 31 critical patients suffering from serious congenital diseases, wounds or amputations, the Italian foreign ministry said at the time.
According to the University hospital of Pisa she had a “very complex clinical picture” and was “in a profound state of organic wasting”, doctors said in a statement.
On Friday, after undergoing tests and starting treatment, she had a sudden respiratory crisis and cardiac arrest, and died.
The hospital did not elaborate on her condition, but Italian news agencies reporting health facility sources said that she was suffering from severe malnutrition.
More than 180 children and young people from Gaza have been brought to Italy since the war began between Israel and Hamas.
According to the UN World Food Programme, one-third of the Palestinian population in Gaza goes for days without eating, and half a million are on the brink of starvation, it said in July.
“The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said last month, calling for an urgent ceasefire to alleviate “widespread starvation”.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) another five people died last week due to malnutrition and starvation, bringing the total number of malnutrition-related deaths to 227, including 103 children, since October 2023.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed last month: “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.”
However, even Donald Trump, Netanyahu’s key international ally, when asked if he agreed with the Israeli PM, said: “I don’t know … those children look very hungry … that’s real starvation stuff.”
Thousands of sick children in Gaza need urgent medical evacuation, according to OCHA.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the agency, recalled the moment she recognised a young girl requiring treatment in a Gaza hospital that she had met a year earlier, once again suffering from malnourishment.
“I remembered her long eyelashes,” the veteran humanitarian told UN News, describing seven-year-old Janah, whom she came across at Gaza City’s Patient Friendly hospital on Tuesday.
“The first time I met her was in the IMC Field Hospital in southern Gaza in April 2024. Back then, she was severely malnourished and was getting treatment. And she gradually became better and was released eventually and went home.”
However, Janah was now back in hospital “because the malnutrition became aggravated and the condition that she has also is not properly diagnosed and cannot be properly diagnosed”.
The girl was on a list of people to be medically evacuated for treatment outside Gaza. The most recent evacuations took place on Wednesday when the World Health Organization supported the transfer of 32 children and six adults to Italy, Belgium and Turkey, but more than 14,800 patients are still waiting.
Cherevko stressed the importance of ensuring that evacuations continue to save as many lives as possible.
She pointed out that for children and adults with pre-existing conditions, their situation becomes worse with malnutrition.
“It wouldn’t be this way if they had proper nutrition, because these conditions existed before the starvation crisis and they weren’t getting as sick as they are now,” she said.
On Saturday the Israeli military announced it was preparing to relocate Palestinians as it launches a new offensive to seize control of northern Gaza City in a plan that has raised international alarm.
