GAZA STRIP: Doctors in Gaza described delivering a newborn baby against incredible odds on Saturday, pulling him from his mother’s womb moments after she died of wounds sustained in an Israeli air strike.

At nine months pregnant, Ola Adnan Harb al-Kurd managed to survive just long enough to reach Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza after an overnight strike hit her home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, medics said.

Emergency department doctors rushed into action when they saw the heavily pregnant woman arrive in critical condition, the head of the obstetrics and gynaecology department, Raed al-Saudi, said. She was taken to the operating room, but was already “almost dead”, surgeon Akram Hussein said.

Unable to save the mother, who they said was in her 20s, doctors detected a heartbeat and a team of obstetricians and surgeons was called. “An emergency caesarean section was performed, and the foetus was extracted,” Saudi said.

Kurd was among at least 30 people killed across the Gaza Strip in a punishing 24 hours of Israeli bombardment that killed six members of one family in a neighbourhood north of Gaza City, rescuers and medics said.

At least seven people were killed in overnight strikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp, a civil defence spokesperson said.

Medical sources at Al-Awda Hospital said four children from Nuseirat were wounded while playing on a roof, with one requiring an amputation.

Kurd’s husband was also wounded in the missile attack that hit their home, said surgeon Hussein. After surviving the C-section, baby Malek Yassin faced further medical hurdles. Born in critical condition, he was stabilised after receiving oxygen and medical attention, Saudi said.

The war in Gaza has made childbirth increasingly perilous, with pregnant women facing near-daily strikes that hamper access to health facilities. If they are able to reach a hospital, they find facilities that humanitarian groups say are stretched to breaking point.

Just 1,500 hospital beds are currently available to Gaza’s more than two million people, compared with 3,500 beds before the conflict, UN agencies have said.

Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat is the only medical facility that has been able to provide obstetric and gynaecological care in central Gaza since the conflict began last year.

Pre-term deliveries and maternal complications, including eclampsia, haemorrhage and sepsis, have been rising, Doctors Without Borders said.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2024