AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to the forced starvation unfolding in Gaza, where malnourished children are overwhelming the remaining hospitals. Today, the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City announced the death of Palestinian child Abdul Qader al-Fayoumi from malnutrition, the 115th starvation-related death since Israel reimposed a siege on Gaza in March. Israeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 62 Palestinians Thursday, 19 of them while trying to collect food from militarized aid sites run by the shadowy U.S.-, Israeli-backed so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF. On Thursday, displaced Palestinian women in Rafah were directed by GHF to a women-only distribution section, where they were attacked with tear gas and pepper spray.

For more, we’re going to Oxford in England to professor Nick Maynard, a consultant surgeon at Oxford University Hospitals who just returned Wednesday after volunteering for four weeks at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, south of Gaza City. He’s volunteered in Gaza several times. His recent piece for The Guardian is headlined “I’m witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s children — why is the world letting it happen?”

Welcome back to Democracy Now! You’ve said that on some days you would see multiple patients injured in the same body parts — for example, gunshot wounds to the groin. Can you explain what you’re saying?

DR. NICK MAYNARD: Yes. Thank you very much for inviting me back.

One of the big differences on this most recent spell in Gaza compared to previous trips during this war has been the huge number of gunshot wounds I’ve had to treat, and specifically gunshot wounds in young teenage boys who have been shot at the food distribution centers, the so-called Gazan Humanitarian Fund. The boys are aged from anything from 11 to 15, 16. They are going there to get food for their starving families. And the narrative, the stories I’m getting from their families, from some of the victims, and indeed from my Gazan healthcare colleagues, who have been to these food distribution sites, is very much the same from all of them. They are going to get food. It is chaos. There is rioting there. And they are being shot by Israeli soldiers and by the quadcopter drones, which are all over Gaza at the moment.

And even more disturbing from that, there is a very clear pattern that the emergency doctors in the ER have recognized, and indeed the surgeons, like me, have recognized, that there is a cluster of injuries to particular body parts on particular days. So, for example, one day there’ll be — most of them will be coming in with gunshot wounds to the head and neck. Another day there’ll be gunshot wounds to the chest, another day to the abdomen and even to the — 12 days ago, we had four young teenage boys, all of whom were admitted with gunshot wounds to the testicles. And the clustering, the pattern we’re seeing is very striking. And it would appear to us that they’re — it’s almost like target practice — playing some sort of game, that we’re going to go for the head today, the abdomen tomorrow, the testicles the day after that. Truly, truly shocking.

AMY GOODMAN: In your piece, you describe a 7-month-old infant, saying, quote, “The phrase 'skin and bones' doesn’t do justice.” Describe what you’re seeing.

DR. NICK MAYNARD: Yeah, so, I spent quite a bit of time in the pediatric unit. I’m an adult surgeon, but I was operating on children, as well. And I had one 11-year-old girl who was on the pediatric intensive care unit, who I was seeing several times a day. So I spent quite a bit of time on the pediatric unit. And I went to the neonatal unit and saw the most awful examples of malnutrition, the like of which I could not have imagined existed in this world, little 7-months-old who looked newborn babies at times. They were all grossly underweight. There was no nutrition to feed them. There was no — or, there was virtually no formula feed to feed these newborn babies, all these infants.

And indeed, there had been no formula feed allowed into Gaza since the last ceasefire, for several months. And some American doctors I know, who I was working with, tried to bring formula feed into Gaza, and all the cartons of formula feed were confiscated by the Israeli border guards, and very specifically confiscating the formula feed, nothing else, just taking out every single carton of formula feed. So, these small children, these newborns, these toddlers, these other children on intensive care were all starving. There was not enough feed to allow them to heal properly.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Maynard, you write, “Every day I watch patients deteriorate and die, not from their injuries, but because they are too malnourished to survive surgery.” Can you describe this?

DR. NICK MAYNARD: Yes, this was particularly in the — I mean, most of the patients I operated on were adults. They come in — most of them come in very malnourished anyway, and they come in with severe injuries, explosive injuries from bombs, with severe shrapnel damage to their abdomen or their chest, or gunshot wounds. And they’re very serious injuries that require major surgery to deal with them. But they are injuries and surgery which in normal circumstances they would be expected to survive.

But because they’re so malnourished, their tissues don’t heal. Their immune systems are suppressed. The internal repairs we carry out to the liver, the pancreas, the duodenum, the stomach, the bowel don’t heal properly. They often end up breaking down, causing terrible infections inside the body. And frequently these patients die. So the mortality rate from these injuries is much higher than one would otherwise expect.

And they are — there is no nutrition in the hospital to give the adults. There’s no intravenous nutrition. There’s virtually no liquid enteral nutrition to go into feeding tubes. They are totally reliant on their families bringing in feed, and many of them are starving themselves. They can’t get any feed to bring into their relatives.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nick Maynard, we’ll end with your headline, “Why is the world letting it happen?” You’ve come back to Britain. France has just said that they’re going to recognize Palestine as a state, putting enormous pressure on Britain to do the same. What you feel needs to be done?

DR. NICK MAYNARD: Well, to be honest, we need more than words. Our prime minister in the U.K., our foreign secretary have certainly come out with stronger words in recent weeks, but there have been no actions. And we need more than words. They are worthless without actions. We need as much aid and food to go in as possible. We need a ceasefire. And our government and the U.S. government need to force the Israeli government to stop this.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nick Maynard, consulting surgeon at Oxford University Hospitals in Oxford, he returned Wednesday after volunteering for four weeks at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. We’ll link to your piece, “I’m witnessing the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s children — why is the world letting it happen?”

When we come back, we go to the Mediterranean Sea. Another Freedom Flotilla aid boat has set sail. We’ll speak with one of the members on board and with the only Palestinian American member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib. Stay with us.

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