Destroyed medical equipment at Al Ahli Hospital. Maternal and newborn mortality rates in Gaza have tripled since the start of the war. Peace and Security
Since October 7, 2023, when Palestinian armed groups attacked southern Israel, triggering a full-scale Israeli offensive on the enclave, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced this on Thursday.
According to OHCHR, 94 percent of hospitals in Gaza are damaged or destroyed, and thousands of pregnant women and newborns are left without essential medical care. “The Israeli blockade has also prevented the entry of supplies vital to the survival of civilians, including medicines and nutrients to maintain pregnancies and ensure safe childbirth,” the Office said in a statement. By the end of 2024, compared with pre-war levels, women in Gaza have become more three times more likely to die in childbirth, and three times more likely to lose a child. Mortality among newborns has also increased, OHCHR notes.
Destroyed hospitals, killed doctors
Israeli strikes destroyed many maternity wards and neonatal intensive care units. The shelling of a major fertility clinic in December 2023 resulted in the loss of more than four thousand embryos and a thousand reproductive samples. Medical personnel were also targeted, OHCHR said, citing Palestinian Health Ministry data that showed 1,722 medical workers had been killed by September 2025. Gynecologist Amberin Slimy, who worked as a volunteer in Gaza, told OHCHR: “As we were going around the wards, shells were exploding all around… Sometimes quadcopters would fly in and try to shoot at the nurses or literally chase them down the hospital corridors.” She said pregnant women were admitted to the hospital with gunshot wounds, including to the abdomen: “Many women were wounded too badly to survive. If their injuries did not cause death, then sepsis often took their lives, as there were not enough medicines and antibiotics. As of October 2025, 463 Palestinians, including 157 children, had died from malnutrition, the enclave’s health ministry said. Gaza-based Jonathan Creeks of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told UN News Service that children and their families are now surviving the winter in makeshift tents: “Everything is completely damp, the mattresses are wet, the children’s clothes are wet. Living in such conditions is extremely difficult.” He warned of an increase in cases of acute watery diarrhea and fears of new outbreaks of diseases: “With poor sanitation conditions and dilapidated sewage systems, we are extremely concerned about the spread of water-borne diseases.”
New barriers in the West Bank
OHCHR also expressed alarm over Israel’s construction of a new barrier and road in the Jordan Valley. The head of the Authority’s office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ajit Sungai, said it would “divide Palestinian communities and leave Palestinian farmers cut off from the land they own on the other side of the planned barrier.”