Gaza City, Gaza Strip – On a mattress placed on the floor of a half-destroyed apartment, Duha Abu Yousef sits holding her newborn baby with great difficulty after an emergency caesarean section was performed following her arrival at a hospital the night before.Abu Yousef, 24, who had entered her ninth month of pregnancy just a few days earlier, had hoped for a natural birth for her first child and to complete her final month of pregnancy.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listHowever, due to her severe anemia, doctors decided to perform a caesarean section to protect her baby.Throughout her pregnancy, Abu Yousef endured physical and psychological pain due to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. What affected her the most was famine and the prolonged shortage of food and nutritional supplements, which severely weakened her body.“Throughout my entire pregnancy, I didn’t taste meat, chicken or eggs, … only in the last three months when things improved slightly,” Abu Yousef, who is displaced, told Al Jazeera from her shelter.“Even nutritional supplements were unavailable. I was constantly unable to move, suffering from headaches and continuous nausea due to lack of food.”Famine and food shortages caused Abu Yousef to suffer from anemia throughout her pregnancy despite her attempts to improve her nutrition to raise her blood levels.“Any pregnant woman generally suffers from low blood levels, but food helps improve her condition,” she said. “However, in Gaza, there is famine, iron deficiency and everything else.”Compounding that was the psychological impact of events she had to face in th …
