Jarring silence Are we ignoring Gaza's women because they are 'not like us'?

Sometimes a disaster is so large that it obscures its own details. Behind the number of dead and displaced in Gaza, for women and girls the conflict has been disproportionately grinding. In a "cruel inversion" of the history of this conflict, the head of UN Women told the Associated Press, women and children have borne the brunt of the war.

- Nesrine Malik

There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and 40% of those pregnancies have been classed as high risk; 180 give birth daily. The healthcare infrastructure has been all but obliterated. Babies are born on the ground in the wilderness, umbilical cords cut with whatever sharp object is to hand and tins filled with hot water keep the newborn warm. C-sections are being performed without any anaesthesia, by surgeons who do not have any water to wash their hands and no antibiotics for any infections. In some cases, according to Washington Post reporting, C-sections were performed on women postmortem.

When mother and child prevail in these impossible circumstances, they are then faced with displacement and hunger while nursing painful tears, wounds and malnourished babies. Pregnant women have had to make the 30km journey from the north to the south in Gaza. They arrive in circumstances that Unicef says "breach famine thresholds". Mothers cannot access sufficient food and clean water to produce milk for their babies and when formula is available finding clean water to mix with it is a challenge.