An acronym that has been employed by medical care workers in Gaza is WCNSF: “wounded child, no surviving family.”
“This avalanche of human suffering is unprecedented in modern times.”
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor for Doctors Without Borders and a co-founder of the GazaMedicVoices social platform, appeared on BBC News from Amman, Jordan, to discuss the dire conditions in Gaza.
The doctor said a new acronym was coined in Gaza three weeks ago: “There’s an acronym that is unique to Gaza strip and it’s WCNSF: Wounded Child No Surviving Family”.
When she was asked about humanitarian pauses, she said: “I’m not a politician, but a ‘pause’ to me makes no sense. You pause to nourish and hydrate a population before you kill them? It just doesn’t make any sense for me. You stop the bombardment.”
Trying to hold back her tears, Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor for Doctors Without Borders, told BBC that the acronym has been used frequently in the last three weeks. In her opinion, such an acronym shouldn’t even exist.
According to Palestinian sources, at least 5,500 children had been killed by November 20, since hostilities began—one Gazan child killed every 10 minutes. Another 2,000 children are presumably dead under the rubble of collapsed buildings. The UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, characterized Gaza as a “graveyard for children”.
To put the scale of the horror into perspective, over 8 times as many children have been killed in Gaza in just one month of Israeli bombardments as in Ukraine during one year of Russian offensive. Between 2008 and 2022, fewer children were killed in the war in Iraq.
Ghada Ageel, a third-generation Palestinian refugee, wrote on The Guardian, on November 15, recounting an emotional conversation between her 4-year-old niece, Shahd, and her sister-in-law. Shahd asked: “Mom, is it painful to die? What is less painful, to die from a rocket or a tank shell?”
She also asked: “Mom, when I am killed, will you bury me next to my cousin Julia? I don’t want to be left alone in the graveyard after people go home. I want to play with Julia.” Julia, her cousin, was killed on October 26 by an Israeli air raid that killed over 50 of Ghada’s close family and neighbours in a block.
Such is the predicament of Gazan children. Sadly enough, they have internalised and normalised the idea of (imminent) death (which becomes less and less a distant possibility, and more and more an unescapable necessity). The omnipresence of death has become part of their daily lives. Much like going to school, playing with friends, or doing homework, Gazan children are now forced to think about death ininterruptedly, and particularly about how they or their friends might die.
“The Age of Innocence.” The more one looks at Reynolds’ painting the more one realizes that our greatest failure is to have ceased to be children. Paradise is a projection in the past of chis early stage in our life, our only comfort for having lost our childhood. Look closely at the child’s delicate hand held timidly against his breast as if to protect his happiness. Has Reynolds understood all this? Or could it be that those large, shadowy eyes express a vague fear of losses to come? Children, like lovers, can fortell the end of happiness.
Cioran, Tears and Saints (1937)
Majority of patients in Gaza are children, many left with no family
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Communications Manager Faris Al-Jawad, based in the West Bank, spoke to ABC News on November 6, 2023, about what MSF staff in Gaza are reporting and what is happening to children who are left orphaned by the bombing.
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