In Gaza, there’s a war on women. Will the west really ignore it because they’re ‘not like us’? | Nesrine Malik

Mothers giving birth with no medical help, babies without milk, one toilet between 500 people - but none of it evokes empathy

Sometimes a disaster is so large that it obscures its own details. Behind the number of dead and displaced in Gaza, for women and girls the conflict has been disproportionately grinding. In a cruel inversion" of the history of this conflict, the head of UN Women told the Associated Press, women and children have borne the brunt of the war.

The details are unfathomable. There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and 40% of those pregnancies have been classed as high risk; 180 give birth daily. The healthcare infrastructure has been all but obliterated. According to the charity Care: There is no doctor, midwife or nurse to support women during labour. There is no pain medication, anaesthesia or hygiene material when women give birth." Babies are born on the ground in the wilderness, umbilical cords cut with whatever sharp object there is to hand, and tins filled with hot water keep the newborn warm. C-sections, painful in the aftermath even when drugs are plentiful, are being performed without any anaesthesia at all, by surgeons who do not have any water to wash their hands, let alone sterilise them, and no antibiotics for any resulting infections. In some cases, according to Washington Post reporting, C-sections were performed on women postmortem.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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