(Image credit: Eight-month-old Salam Wadi at an UNRWA clinic in Gaza City, July 9, 2025. Hussein Owda/UNRWA)
Adam has been on my mind lately, more so than usual.
I met Adam in 2018 in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, which was then under siege and heavy bombardment. In the dilapidated hospital ward, there lay Adam: 10 years old and weighing just over 10 kilograms. Unable to speak or cry, all he could do was make a hoarse sound with every breath. A few days later, Adam died of malnutrition.
A couple of years before that, my colleague Hanaa called from Syria late one night. She was in tears and could barely say a word. Eventually she told me that Ali, a 16-year-old boy, had died — he, too, of malnutrition, in yet another besieged town, caught in a war not of his making.
The following morning, my supervisor, an epidemiologist, said: “For a boy of 16 to die of malnutrition, that says a lot. He’s practically a man. It means there’s no food at all in that part of Syria.”
Back in Yemen, in one of the few functioning children’s hospitals in the capital city of Sana’a, I remember walking through the children’s ward during the height of a cholera outbreak. Boys aged 15 or 16 were fighting to survive. They were so weak and emaciated, they could barely turn in their beds.
These images and stories haunted me over the years, as they have for many of us who have worked in severe hunger or famine-like situations.
In 2022, when I could still visit Gaza regularly, I would stop by UNRWA schools and meet children — immaculately dressed, healthy looking, smiling, eager to learn, jumping up and down in the school playground to the sound of music.
Back then, Gaza had already been under blockade for more than 15 years. Still, food was available; imported through Israel or grown locally. UNRWA was also providing food aid to more than a million people.
And so, images of Adam and Ali were pushed to the back of my mind — until they came rushing back
