Gaza has been declared the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.

UNFPA is delivering lifesaving care to those who need it most amid this unrelenting humanitarian crisis, and we’ll detail firsthand accounts of the suffering in Gaza in just a moment.

But every moment counts in a humanitarian emergency. Please make an emergency gift to support the children of Gaza and those living through crisis zones around the world.

Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa are humanitarian surgeons who have completed more than 40 surgical missions combined across four continents, as they chronicled in a piece for Politico. None of that could have prepared them for what they saw while volunteering at a hospital in Gaza this year.

Here’s what they said firsthand:

“We have always gone where we were most needed. In March, it was obvious that the place was the Gaza Strip.

“By the time we arrived, 59 percent of all the hospital beds in Gaza had been destroyed, while the remaining partially functioning hospitals operated at 359 percent of their actual bed capacity.

“We first noticed the overcrowding: 1,500 people were admitted to a 220-bed hospital. Rooms meant to hold four patients typically had 10 to 12, and patients were housed in every possible space: the radiology department, the common areas, everywhere.

“Next, we noticed the 15,000 people sheltering on the hospital grounds and inside the hospital — lining and even blocking the hallways, throughout the wards, in the bathrooms and closets, on the stairs, even in the sterile processing and food preparation facilities and the operating rooms themselves. The hospital itself was a displaced persons camp.”

As Mark and Feroze detail, the healthcare system in Gaza is in a state of collapse. What is a nightmare for the entire population is especially perilous for pregnant women, who lack the medicine, medical supplies, food, and healthcare they desperately need.

UNFPA — the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency — is making a difference in Gaza by providing enough supplies, medicine, and personnel to support half of all births since conflict erupted, thanks to your emergency gifts.

Needs in Gaza are compounding, so we need to ask: Will you deliver the gift of lifesaving care by making an emergency donation today?

MAKE AN EMERGENCY GIFT

We condemn the violence in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, and echo the UN Secretary-General’s call for a sustained humanitarian ceasefire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages by Hamas. The suffering must end and peace must prevail.

Thank you for not looking away in moments like this.

— Jacob Geers
Director of Individual Giving
USA for UNFPA