50,000 pregnant women are trapped in a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, with 5,500 expected to give birth in the next month — all while the health system nears total collapse amidst continued conflict.

Thanks to your gifts, UNFPA is actively on the ground, delivering emergency birthing kits. These kits serve as a crucial last resort to prevent infection during delivery in areas where access to a safe and reliable healthcare facility is lacking.

UNFPA’s delivery kits contain one bar of soap, a plastic sheet, a pair of scissors for cutting the umbilical cord, three pieces of umbilical tape, two cotton cloths for cleaning and covering the mother and child, a pair of latex exam gloves, and an instruction pamphlet to guide women through their deliveries.

Like millions who have been displaced across the region, many pregnant women "don’t know where they’re going to be in the next minute or the next day," according to Dominic Allen — the UNFPA representative for the Palestinian territories. That’s why these mobile birth kits are so essential.

Please make an emergency gift to help fund emergency birth kits for pregnant women facing dangerous births in Gaza and around the world:

According to Allen, Gaza’s hospitals and maternity wards are starved of water and fuel. Critical medicines are running low and cannot be replenished until more humanitarian aid arrives.

Itimad Abu Ward, a midwife and nurse, has seen the carnage first hand. Abu Ward told the New York Times she met a pregnant woman at a United Nations shelter last week who urgently needed to get to a hospital — she was in labor and concerned about decreased fetal movement.

But it took two days to find safe transportation and an open bed for the woman at a nearby hospital, according to Abu Ward. As the health center’s electricity flickered on and off and explosions boomed outside, she said the few medical supplies that she was able to bring from home would not be enough to save a pregnant woman if she began hemorrhaging.

Maternal mortality rates are expected to rise until aid arrives with two-thirds of Gaza’s health facilities not functioning according to the World Health Organization.

The conflict has impacted 34 healthcare facilities, causing damage to 19 hospitals and the destruction of 24 ambulances, pushing Gaza's healthcare system to the edge of collapse.

Pregnant women are urgently counting on your generous support today. Will you make an emergency gift to deliver lifesaving care — like emergency birth kits — to women facing dangerous childbirths?

Thank you for always being there for women and girls.

— USA for UNFPA