Gaza’s families are entering winter with little protection against harsh winter conditions and a collapsing healthcare system. Women and children face particular danger as winter storms compound the risks. The first storm turned that vulnerability into an emergency: within 12 hours on Saturday, rain flooded about 70,000 tents, while flooding forced al-Shifa hospital’s emergency department out of service for four hours. The hospital’s director warned that dozens, potentially hundreds, of newborns could die because they lack warmth and protection in makeshift shelters. This compounds a maternity and neonatal crisis. Before the storm, the UN reported that special-care baby units were operating at 199 per cent of capacity and nearly 63 per cent of deliveries were classified as high-risk. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme announced cuts to food assistance for around half a million people, further weakening families already struggling to cope.
A system that cannot catch anyone
About 180 babies are born in Gaza every day. UNFPA says one in three pregnancies is high-risk and more than half of pregnant women are anaemic. It recorded nearly 4,000 pregnancy losses in the first half of 2026, three times the figure for the previous six months, and fewer than half of health facilities are working. The UN warns that Israeli restrictions on engine oil and spare parts mean adult and neonatal ventilators, ambulances and vaccine fridges could stop working.
Leaving to get treated
Some care cannot be given in Gaza at all. Since October 2023, 13,237 patients have been evacuated, with 16,406 companions. More than 18,500 were still waiting in early February, and Gaza’s health ministry says 1,268 patients had died while waiting by late January. In the last week of October, 107 patients left through Rafah and Kerem Shalom, the UN reports. At that pace, February’s waiting list would take more than three years to clear.
New Lines Magazine tells the story of Suhaila, who died of cancer on 20 June 2026 before she could leave. The magazine reports that Israel had not approved her evacuation while her cancer was still treatable. Patients once travelled mostly through Erez into Israel and on to hospitals in East Jerusalem or the West Bank, with some sent to Jordan.
Each patient can leave with up to two companions, and families do go together. Through 23-29 October, NCF’s weekly index recorded 387 people leaving Gaza, nearly double previous week’s 195. Over the past year about 10,500 people left and roughly 6,000 came back, according to the Algemeiner, a net loss of around 4,500.
Gaza’s hospitals are wrecked, so the only treatment for a woman with cancer or a dangerous pregnancy is abroad. Her family goes with her, because leaving them in a tent in winter is not an option. Then the road back is narrow and controlled by one party. Nobody has to be forced out for a population to shrink. Israeli ministers openly promote voluntary emigration, and Kan reported that the US-backed Peace Board asked Israel to plan departures for patients and students. The Algemeiner interprets the same data as evidence that Israel is not forcing anyone to leave Gaza. NCF, however, considers that the combination of medical evacuations, restrictions on return and the promotion of voluntary emigration raises serious concerns about the longer-term displacement of Palestinians. Regardless of whether this is the intended outcome, the consequences could be the same. NCF therefore calls for the safe entry of medicines and specialist medical teams alongside patient evacuations, with a guaranteed right of return for all those who leave Gaza for treatment.
Period poverty
Period poverty gets the least attention here, and it shows the failure most clearly. UNICEF says menstrual pads have all but disappeared from shops and, where they turn up, the price is out of reach. UNFPA estimates that 10.3 million pads are needed every month for the 690,000 women and girls who menstruate. In the first year of the war it distributed 6.1 million in total, about 60 per cent of a single month’s need. Other agencies gave out supplies too, but the gap is wide. During the total blockade since 2 March 2025, UNFPA says hygiene supplies, including pads, ran out completely.
Scarcity sets the price, and women pay it from the food budget. One displaced mother of three, whose name was changed by The New Arab , described a painful trade-off between food and sanitary pads which cost around ten times the normal price. Pads often won, at the expense of the family’s evening meal. Liz Alcock of Medical Aid for Palestinians told The New Arab in the same article that soap and sanitary towels were removed from aid shipments at the border at a time when they were scarce.
A pad is only part of it. Managing a period safely needs clean water, soap, a private toilet and pain relief. A family in a tent has little of any, and this weekend’s rain mixed sewage into the tents. A 19-year-old told UNFPA she owned one pair of underwear and washed it in dirty water, when there was water, before wearing it again. For a 16-year-old called Leena, stress, fear and malnutrition stopped her periods for a year and a half, and she is still treating the effects, including hair loss.
The response has its own blind spots. A woman interviewed by The New Arab said most distribution workers are men, who hand out one kit to a household with several women and girls. When a food agency halves rations, a woman who already gives up part of her family’s evening meal for pads has less to trade. Nobody has measured that trade.
The cuts effect on Women
On 19 October the WFP said it is cutting monthly help from 1.6 million people to 1.1 million. Rations are halved, hot meals fall from 250,000 a day to 150,000, and cash support is cut by 40 per cent in value for 75,000 families. AFP reported that the shortfall comes partly from US cuts to UN agencies. The UN’s winter plan for Gaza is short by $186.5 million of the $267.9 million it needs, and partners report less cargo to ship because of funding constraints.
No agency has yet published a gender breakdown of the cuts, so the case rests on what is already documented. Mervat al-Satari, a displaced mother of five in Khan Younis, told the BBC the cuts were a disaster and asked how she would feed her little ones. UN experts warned in March that pregnant women and women-headed households are at greatest risk when aid is restricted. This month UN Women said that 13 of the 14 women’s organisations it surveyed in Gaza and the West Bank report higher child marriage & gender-based violence since the 2025 funding cuts. In December the US pledged $2 billion for UN humanitarian work, against as much as $17 billion a year before, and the Palestinian territories were left out of that deal. The UK is cutting its aid budget to 0.3% of national income, though Yvette Cooper (Former UK Foreign Secretary) says Palestine’s allocation is fully protected.
Gaza’s fourth winter in tents is not simply another humanitarian emergency; it tests whether protecting women and children is an urgent international responsibility. A woman giving birth in a flooded shelter, a newborn in an overcrowded unit and a girl unable to obtain sanitary products face different consequences of the same collapsing system. Israel must allow the immediate entry of food, medicines, fuel, menstrual supplies and essential equipment, and remove obstacles to humanitarian and medical teams. Patients needing treatment unavailable in Gaza must be evacuated safely, with companions, and with their right to return guaranteed. Donors, including the UK and US, should restore reliable funding and ensure assistance reaches women and girls fairly. The UN should monitor access and distribution, publishing data by sex and age, and hold responsible parties accountable. Emergency aid must protect dignity as well as life.
Image Source: Ashraf Amra, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Wikimedia Commons
