AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue our coverage of Gaza, a Palestinian medical organization reports Israeli forces are increasingly abducting doctors across Gaza, with some 28 doctors currently held in Israeli prisons. Among them is Dr. Marwan al-Hams, head of Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital. He was last seen 10 days ago, when an Israeli undercover unit seized him at a field hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Rafah.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, our next guest is a U.S.-based surgeon just back from Gaza, where she treated patients at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where she says malnutrition cases are everywhere, in newborn babies, pregnant women, even among the hospital staff. Dr. Ambereen Sleemi is a urogynecologist who’s the executive director of the International Medical Response Foundation based here in New York City, has provided medical services in numerous countries, including Pakistan, Nigeria and Ukraine. She’s joining us here in New York.

Thanks so much, Doctor, for joining us. You are just back this week from Gaza. Talk about what you found on the ground and the evidence that the prime minister of Israel is denying, that there is starvation in Gaza.

DR. AMBEREEN SLEEMI: Good morning. Thank you for having me here in New York.

Yeah, I just got back two days ago, and I spent about three-and-a-half weeks there, and primarily in the maternity hospital on the grounds of Nasser Hospital. And it was evident to me, in my firsthand experience, that what I was seeing was malnourishment in my patients, which were pregnant patients, but also those needing gynecologic care. And it was evident by the numbers of babies and their birth weight that was coming out, that they were being born to malnourished women. It was evident in the decreased ability to breastfeed when the newborns were born by the moms, and also in the way that pregnancies had complications, that had increased in number, and remarkably so, in the last few months of the siege. So, there was ample evidence just clinically by, you know, numbers in cases of complications, by birth weights of babies, by preterm babies, and also just being able to look at our patients, you know, to see bones that normally we wouldn’t see.

And we also saw it in our hospital staff, because not only were those being taken care of in a hospital starving with lack of access to good, nutritious food on a regular basis, but also the caregivers were also feeling the same lack of food, feeling the same hunger pains. And it was openly discussed, because everybody would sit and talk about how hungry they were, in the break room and when they were leaving, that they had to go now and find food for their families. So, you know, I think it was — it was very clear, in my experience and those I was working with, that this was really a starvation crisis that was occurring.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Sleemi, you spent most of your time there in operating rooms. If you could talk about the intersection, the pregnant women that you dealt with, who were also suffering from traumatic injuries?

DR. AMBEREEN SLEEMI: Yeah.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: What were the principal things that you were treating and the surgeries you were performing?

DR. AMBEREEN SLEEMI: I’m really glad you asked that, because I think when we talk about pregnancy in a war zone, we really need to address the issue of trauma in pregnant patients. And actually, just before coming here, I found out that one of our pregnant patients who was in the ICU had passed away yesterday. And she was five months pregnant and sleeping in a tent, and a bomb was dropped in the area, that’s supposed to be a safe zone. So she ended up coming in with, you know, extensive burns and explosive injuries with shrapnel and required major surgery for the burns, with skin grafts, major surgery, abdominal surgery, to get rid of the shrapnel. She had lost vision in one eye, and she was intubated. She couldn’t breathe on her own because of inhalation from the smoke and fire. So, there was a thought that she would be able to pull through. Oh, and by the way, she was also five months pregnant, which was really hard to even notice because she was so malnourished. So, I, you know, was consulted to come in and at least do an ultrasound and make sure that the baby was alive. And before I left, it was. And so, I just found out yesterday as I was checking up on her — I found out this morning that she had passed away.

And there’s always hope that somebody will pull through. But the situations with the sanitation in Nasser Hospital, we also just heard, as we were leaving on Monday morning, that the clinical wound services for over 400 patients had to be suspended because the supplies had run out. So, we’re already dealing with, you know, malnutrition and starvation because of the Israeli siege on food and supplies, affecting healing on a heavily traumatized patient population, including pregnant women. And now the services that were going to be withheld were the one thing that could get them to some healing with appropriate wound care.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, who claimed that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was flooding food into Gaza. As we know, Netanyahu has denied outright that there’s starvation in Gaza. This is the Israeli ambassador.

YECHIEL LEITER: We feel the same way. The prime minister feels the same way. And that’s why he’s taken every decision possible to have food flood into Gaza. As a matter of fact, right now as we speak, there’s 636 trucks, semi-trailers, waiting to enter Gaza, and U.N. agencies are not picking them up, because of their argument with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. … I appeal to the international community and to the media. I mean, look, there have been pictures that have been broadcast, even on CNN — I got to say this, excuse me, but even on CNN — pictures of children who are suffering from cerebral palsy or cystic fibrosis, not from hunger, and yet we’re condemned for it. This has a long history of pointing the finger at the Jewish state. It really has to stop.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that was the Israeli ambassador speaking earlier. So, you know, the reference is to a New York Times cover story which showed the image of a child who appeared — in fact, was — starving. But the Israelis said the story was misleading because the child actually had cerebral palsy. Now, Dr. Sleemi, if you could explain, you know, that argument, respond to what was said now, but also the fact that that child had cerebral palsy? But first of all, cerebral palsy patients don’t necessarily look so enormously emaciated. And, you know, the claims that Israel is making about what’s actually going on in Gaza?

DR. AMBEREEN SLEEMI: Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point, that the government, on one hand, is saying one thing, and then, in our experience, what we’ve seen firsthand as clinicians on the ground are seeing something completely different, that there is, you know, widespread starvation caused by the siege. We see it every day. We see it in our patients and in children, not just with other conditions, but including cerebral palsy. They shouldn’t be starving to death. So, we have other children who don’t have any other conditions, who were also clearly starving from lack of nutritional food, and adults, and, like I said, the caretakers that are supposed to be taking care of those who come in for care. I mean, how is this possible that they also are not getting nutritional food and starving and hungry?

AMY GOODMAN: And just to be clear, I mean, if you’re suffering starvation, and you get food, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be OK for the rest of your life.

DR. AMBEREEN SLEEMI: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the effect of starvation on children, on adults?

DR. AMBEREEN SLEEMI: Sure. Based on what I know — again, it’s not my area of expertise, but we know that many adults and children right now are in a stage five of the famine and starvation, and reintroducing food to a body that’s been starved for months has to be done very carefully, and it can actually lead to somebody dying if it’s not done appropriately, because you have lack of not just food. I mean, you can eat bread every day, but that’s not enough to sustain development, a healthy, you know, brain development, body development. And I think that’s the thing that you’ll see even in kids now, after being deprived for months.

The siege that’s happening in the last few months is an acute event on top of a chronic, already malnourished population. So, it’s, you know, insult to injury. And again, these long-term effects of developmental delay for kids, we see that. We know that’s a possibility. How is it going to affect the adults long term, when they do eventually get a steady supply of food? And I think that we know that there’s going to be chronic health conditions.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve also worked in Ukraine. We just have 30 seconds, but the comparisons?

DR. AMBEREEN SLEEMI: I mean, they’re both tragic situations. But one thing I’ll say is I have worked in both and, as a humanitarian physician, feel that it’s important that we work where we can, where the populations need it. But the one thing I can say for Gaza that is different is that there’s no safe place in Gaza. We hear it all the time. Being there, it was absolutely — it was completely evident that there is no safe place in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, urogynecologist, executive director of the International Medical Response Foundation, just back this week from volunteering for several weeks at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in Gaza.