KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA STRIP (AP) — As they settled in cold December in Gaza, the family’s nylon tent offered little shelter. So every night, Aseid Abdin would cover his fragile newborn son with four blankets, periodically shining a flashlight into the baby’s eyes to confirm he was okay.
By Wednesday night, when 29-day-old Saeed, his tiny body racked with cold, was unresponsive.
The premature and very low birth weight baby became the second child to die of hypothermia at Nasser Hospital in recent days, doctors said on Thursday. They warned that there could soon be more if conditions in the tent camps housing thousands of Palestinians were not improved.
“I was always scared for him and tried to keep him warm. But it’s very cold,” the child’s mother, Ravya Abdin, told The Associated Press on Thursday. When doctors reported her son dead, her screams drew neighbors. “Why him?” she cried.
Nasser’s director of pediatrics. Ahmed al-Fara said the baby arrived at the hospital Wednesday night with a body temperature of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), well below the level of hypothermia. Medics tried their best to revive the child but he died on Thursday morning, Al-Fara said.
Overnight temperatures in Gaza have reached 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days.
“We are warning that this tragedy will happen again unless there is a permanent solution for children, and especially premature babies, because they are more vulnerable to falling temperatures,” Al-Fara said. “They live in piled tents exposed to wind and cold weather and these tents lack all the means to stay warm.”
Colds are a particular danger for premature babies because their fat tissues are less developed and their bodies quickly lose energy.
According to the Ministry of Health, the death toll has reached 13 after the death of a newborn baby due to a powerful storm in Gaza last week. Among them were 11 people who died when buildings already damaged by heavy rains collapsed, as well as two children who died of exposure to cold. The first baby lost to hypothermia, two-week-old Mohammed Khair, was born after a full-term pregnancy.
Although the current ceasefire has been in place for two months, it has not allowed enough shelter material to be sent to Gaza, aid groups say. Recently released Israeli military figures suggest that it has not met a truce condition allowing 600 trucks of aid a day into Gaza, although Israel disputes that finding. U.S. officials with the U.S. Command Center, which coordinates aid shipments to Gaza, also said the distribution had reached an agreed level.
Most of Gaza’s two million people have been displaced, and most people live in tent camps spread along the coast or among the shells of damaged buildings. Buildings lack adequate flood infrastructure and people use cesspits dug near tents as toilets.
Abdens said their makeshift tent, in Muwasi in southern Gaza, is regularly flooded by rainwater.
Ravya Abdin said her son weighed just 1.3 kilograms (2.9 pounds) at birth and spent two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit.
The child became unresponsive with a common cold when the child’s father turned on the light at around 10pm on Wednesday night. An examination under light showed the child was throwing up, his mother said, and the family took him to the hospital. His father said he had prayed for Saeed’s survival, before doctors called in the morning to say the child had died.
“I was willing to trade my soul to save him,” said Esed Abdin.
