Canadian aid agency workers call for action saying starvation is rampant in Gaza

TORONTO — Canadian aid agencies say malnutrition and starvation is rampant among children in Gaza, as well as among the aid workers trying to help them.

The Toronto-based president and CEO at Save the Children Canada said Friday the global agency’s clinics are inundated by 200 to 300 people arriving each day.

Danny Glenwright said there’s been “a tenfold” increase in the number of children suffering acute malnutrition over the past two months, and that even clinic staff are bringing their children in for help.

“Every single child is now coming in malnourished,” Glenwright said. “We’re also seeing their parents increasingly malnourished and skin-and-bones.”

That’s echoed by Canada’s executive director of Doctors Without Borders, with Sana Beg adding that members of her organization have had to donate their own blood to patients because supplies are so short.

Beg said Doctors Without Borders welcomed Canada’s recent denunciation of the Israeli government for failing to prevent the humanitarian crisis but called for immediate concrete actions that would open borders to aid trucks carrying desperately needed food and medical supplies.

“Just recently we’ve had a couple of a handful of trucks that came in with the fuel that was required. A drop in the ocean of needs, really,” said Beg.

“We have no sterile equipment, we have no clean sheets in the hospitals, our hospitals themselves are barely functional, as I said. There is no adequate or safe passage for either civilians, patients, or aid workers to be able to even arrive at medical facilities such as hospitals or clinics.”

International experts have warned that a “worst-case scenario of famine” is playing out in Gaza, where Israel’s military offensive against Hamas has made it nearly impossible to safely deliver food to starving people.

Glenwright said Friday that Canadians should be upset by the crisis, calling it “a profound moral, political, and legal failure.”

“There’s no food anywhere else in Gaza and the limited supplies we have are running out,” said Glenwright, whose agency has a clinics in Khan Younis and one in Deir al Balah.

“The trucks that are sitting on the border — thousands of them with these life-saving supplies — are not being allowed in at the scale that is required. And it’s a calamity.”

Several aid agencies detailed a near-total collapse of the humanitarian system in a press conference Tuesday in London that included members of Oxfam, War Child Alliance, Save the Children International in Gaza and the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network.

Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday accused the Israeli government of violating international law by denying aid as it controls aid distribution, and called on all sides to negotiate an immediate ceasefire.

Beg detailed a catastrophic decline in a region where dire shortages had already forced some doctors to carry out surgeries and limb amputations without anesthesia.

“Today we’re talking about a crisis that has magnified tenfold since then,” said Beg, noting premature babies now have to share a single ICU incubator.

“So three or four babies crowded into one incubator at the ICU. Our teams are talking about having to donate their own blood for the patients because there is such a shortage.”

Beg said her organization, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, has about a thousand staff in Gaza, most of them locally hired Palestinians. About 30 to 35 international staff come in for temporary assignments, among them about five Canadians.

As malnutrition cases increase, she said staff have had to make gruelling choices over who can be considered dire enough to receive treatment for severe acute malnutrition.

Glenwright suggested Canada could do much more diplomatically and economically, noting how strongly the country mobilized to help Ukraine.

“Our government’s inability to do more is shameful to all of us,” Glenwright said. “Canadians can pressure their government – call your MP, say that you want candidates to do much more.”

Beg agreed and called on Canadians to inform themselves about the crisis and act.

“Call your local MPs. Write to the Canadian government. Sign petitions,” she said. “Make your voice heard. Use all of your avenues as a citizen of a democracy to speak truth to power.”

– With files from The Associated Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 1, 2025.

Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press