September 2024 Update
September was an eventful month for our project. First, we want to thank the heroic medical workers and administrators who are helping with Jana Ayad’s case, including Dr. Noor Al Whaidi, Dr. Hani Al Faleet, and the WHO’s Dr.Salwa Massad. They are the true heroes of this story. We express our heartfelt gratitude and admiration to them, and to all of their colleagues, for their tireless efforts to heal the sick and injured people of Gaza.
Jana’s condition remains perilous. Her weight, at its lowest point, had dropped to 9 kg (less than 20 lbs). She has since gained two kilograms, but at 11 kg she remains dangerously underweight for an 8-year-old girl.
Jana suffers from chronic aftereffects of prolonged malnutrition, including digestive problems, bone pain, and alarming new symptoms, such as hair loss and worsening psychological trauma. To recover physically and emotionally, she desperately needs to receive treatment outside of Gaza.
Alongside providing financial support to the Ayad family, we are working to facilitate their evacuation from Gaza to the UAE or Egypt. On September 3rd, Dr. Hani provided a referral report to the Ministry of Health. We’re now waiting for the WHO to add Jana to their evacuation list.
The Ayad family has already endured months of agonizing delays. They were approved for evacuation in April, but the destruction of the Rafah border crossing prevented them from leaving. Their approval documents then expired, and now the lengthy application process must begin again.
This endless waiting has become difficult for Nesma to bear. The family is stuck living in a tent, where Nesma must care for Jana, her sick daughter, as well as her three other children (who range in age from 1 to 10). The children don’t go to school, instead spending their days in a state of enforced idleness that robs them of childhood joy and crushes their young spirts.
Jana’s psychological condition is deteriorating. Our team member Mona Al Tally, who lives nearby in the Al-Nusirat camp, visited Nesma and the children twice this month. During both of Mona’s visits, Jana was incommunicative and refused eye contact. She remained in a fetal position with her hands clasped over her face.
When Jana does speak, she fixates on her absent father. When the war began, he was in Egypt to donate his liver to his father, and he’s been cut off from the family ever since. Jana cries constantly for her father, begging Nesma to take her to him. As Mona witnessed, she frequently becomes inconsolable
Every day, Nesma endures the heartbreak of telling Jana, yet again, that her father remains far away. The other children also miss their father desperately.
To obtain the emergency treatment that saved Jana’s life, Nesma was forced to flee from northern Gaza, where her home was destroyed by bombing, to the tent facility in Deir al Balah, where she’s far away from her relatives. Nesma tells us she’s reaching the limits of her ability to cope with stress, loneliness, and the worry of not knowing when—or if—her family’s evacuation will happen.
We’ll do our best to facilitate the evacuation approval process and to make the waiting period as bearable for Nesma as we can. We’re determined to help Nesma to restore her daughter’s health, reunite her children with their father, and begin rebuilding her family’s future.
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