GAZA,(Palestine Foundation Information Center) On the edge of agony, beside a school-turned-displacement center, eleven-year-old Rital Al-Farra stood bargaining with a slightly older boy over a red bag that weighed no more than a handful of grams. Yet within it lay a temporary promise of relief from hunger for her and her siblings. That bag wasn’t candy—it was a nutritional supplement, a meager substitute for food that had been absent for months.
In Gaza, where hunger preys on the bodies of children before it reaches the adults, nutritional supplements are no longer just a medical option prescribed as part of care plans. They have become commodities that childhood itself must haggle for at makeshift stalls in refugee camps. More than ten shekels—that’s the price of a single bag of nutritional supplement. Not enough to satisfy even one child, but perhaps all the hope a family can cling to.
Rital says, “There’s no healthy food at all—no fruit, no vegetables, not even any sweets. When we hear that the supplement’s price has dropped by a shekel, we save our pocket money day after day so we can buy it for our brothers and help make them stronger.”
Supplements: The illusion of endurance in a time of siege
In Gaza, nutritional supplements are divided into two types: the red ones—ready-to-eat therapeutic food given to children suffering from severe malnutrition; and the yellow ones—a preventive nutritional stabilizer provided to children aged 6 months to 5 years, as well as to pregnant and breastfeeding women.
But as nutrition specialist Mohammad Mansour explains, despite containing the bare minimum of nutrients, these supplements are not real substitutes for food. They are intended as support tools in stable health environments—not in a place where fruit rots at border crossings and infant formula is hoarded on the black market.
The World Health Organization emphasizes, “Nutritional supplements are not a replacement for real food. They are used in comprehensive nutritional settings—not in areas suffering from deliberate starvation.”
“My little sister can’t stand the pain”
Rital’s suffering doesn’t end with her own needs. Her younger sister, frail and severely underweight, was prescribed one yellow bag per day. But the family, unable to provide even that, has been forced to share the burden of survival among the children themselves.
Rital and her siblings save their allowances for three days to buy a single bag—a temporary lifeline that could be cut off at any moment.
With eyes wide with childhood worry, Rital asks, “I hear about kids dying from malnutrition. Could that happen to my sister? She’s little—she can’t bear it.”
Mothers cradling emaciation instead of milk
Inside a small room in one of the shelters, Iman Abu Al-Nour holds her year-and-a-half-old daughter, who weighs barely 9 kilograms. No food, no medicine, not even baby formula. Her other child suffers from thrombocytopenia (low blood platelets). The only available “treatment”? A few bags of nutritional supplements—bags that do nothing to replace the missing meat, vegetables, or milk.
The mother says, “These supplements don’t make up for anything. We just give them because there’s nothing else. It’s consumption, not a cure.”
Boundless hunger… and anger met with silence
The UNRWA agency speaks of a terrifying hunger crisis growing in Gaza—of people fainting in the streets, humiliating aid distributions, and a system that strips families of their humanity.
Last June, Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, Head of Pediatrics at Nasser Hospital, warned of an imminent health disaster due to the depletion of infant formula. The Ministry of Health later confirmed this, reporting near-total shortages and the appearance of expired formula on the black market.
As for vegetables, fruit, eggs, and meat—they have become little more than fading memories at Gazan tables.
Between a deferred life and a certain death… what future awaits Gaza’s children?
Gaza’s crisis is no longer just the story of a siege. It has become a prolonged health catastrophe paid for with children’s fragile bodies.
Those colorful bags of supplements mean nothing in the face of empty bellies and mothers nursing their children with tears instead of milk.
In Gaza, no one tastes the flavor of life—even when children’s hands are filled with “lifesaving bags.”
