World Humanitarian Day: Holding Children’s Lives in My Hands

I have held children in Gaza who have cried their last tears. I have stood beside mothers in labour on bare floors, in the dark, with no anaesthesia, no clean water, and no chance to save them when they began to bleed. These are not echoes from history. This is Gaza now, in 2025, and the world is watching it unfold in real time.

In Gaza, hospitals have been pulverised by Israeli bombs into dust. The few that remain standing have no reliable water or electricity. Medical supplies are almost gone. Food is scarce. Ambulances are targeted. According to ActionAid Palestine, more than 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza have no access to functioning hospitals, ultrasounds, prenatal care, or safe deliveries. Some undergo emergency caesareans without pain relief. Premature babies die due to a lack of incubators. Mothers bleed to death because the blood bank is empty, or destroyed and the international surgeons that could help are denied entry.

These numbers are horrifying. I have been to Gaza twice: I have seen, heard and breathed in the realities of lives lost due to lack of a functioning hospital.

Right now, in Jordan, a fully equipped mobile maternity and neonatal hospital is ready. Built by humanitarian organisation Pious Projects, it has everything needed: incubators, surgical theatres, medicines, and trained staff. It could be inside Gaza and saving lives within a week.

But it sits gathering dust. Humanitarian and medical aid is being blocked by Israel from entering Gaza. This is not about money, the hospital is built, funded, and ready. This is about political courage. The political courage to save lives. The lives of mothers and babies.

I am a British-Australian doctor of Palestinian heritage. I live in Perth and train as an emergency physician. In April, I returned from Gaza’s emergency departments to work in Australia’s emergency department; the contrast overwhelms me. I want the same care for mothers and children in Gaza as we provide here.

My wife remains in Palestine. Every day, while I treat patients in Perth, I think about her safety. My personal and professional lives are bound to this crisis. When I call for help, it is both as a doctor who has signed the Hippocratic Oath and as a husband, cousin and nephew whose loved ones are living through the genocide and forced starvation.

When on my last humanitarian mission in Gaza, I appealed to the Australian Prime Minister for protection, not for privilege, but because I believe an Australian passport should mean something. Aid workers should be protected by their governments. Now, I am asking Australia and the international community to lead an urgent humanitarian coalition to get the Maternal and Neonatal hospital into Gaza. The UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Jordan, and Indonesia are already in discussions. If Australia says “yes”, it can help trigger the diplomatic pressure needed to open humanitarian access.

Hospitals are not political. Saving a baby’s life is not political. Providing a woman with safe childbirth is not political. This is about our shared humanity and the values we claim to hold.

On World Humanitarian Day, we honour those who risk everything to save others. We owe it to the people of Gaza to act, not just speak. We have the hospital. We have the staff. We have the supplies. All that’s left is the political courage to get it there. Let our response be compassion, not silence. Let our legacy be action, not neglect, because Gaza’s children cannot wait another day. 

Author: Dr Mohammed Mustafa, British-Australian Doctor and Humanitarian

Header image credit: © UNICEF