Gaza's children are recovering from hunger. Doctors fear it won't last.

The findings come from surveys conducted a year apart, not repeated examinations of the same children. In July 2026, MedGlobal surveyed 1,304 households and assessed 1,250 children aged 6-59 months across four Gaza districts. The comparison reveals a striking population-level improvement, but cannot establish that each child previously diagnosed with malnutrition has recovered.

The contrast with the previous year is particularly stark in northern Gaza, where MedGlobal had measured acute malnutrition at 25.6% in July 2025. The organization credits a wider effort involving therapeutic foods, early screening, maternal support, and community outreach alongside other humanitarian agencies.

For some children, however, the report documents individual progress. Yara, a 28-month-old girl admitted to a MedGlobal-supported stabilization center in Khan Younis in December 2025, weighed just 7.76 kilograms and was severely malnourished. After medical care, therapeutic feeding and follow-up, her weight reached 9.36 kilograms. 

MedGlobal president Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a pulmonary and critical care physician who helped establish the organization in 2017, told the National Catholic Reporter he has seen a very different Gaza in recent years. During an early-2024 medical mission at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, he found displaced families sheltering around the building and patients lying on mattresses in corridors.

"It's like you are transported to a parallel universe," he said of crossing at Rafah.

After one nearby military strike, about 200 casualties arrived at the emergency department, he said. There were too few beds, so patients were treated on the floor. Among them was 13-year-old Khalil Ahmad, who had brain and liver injuries. Despite surgery, the boy never regained consciousness.

"I still remember his name," Sahloul said. He said he later showed photographs from that mission to then-President Joe Biden, hoping to convey the human consequences of the war.

From July 2025 to July 2026, MedGlobal teams screened more than 100,000 children under 5, supported treatment for over 21,500 children and counseled 65,704 mothers and caregivers, the report said.

Sahloul said hundreds of Palestinian health workers continue running clinics and other services even as international staff face restrictions on entering Gaza. The more recent improvements sit alongside severe vulnerabilities. Citing food-security projections, the report warns that 74,200 children could need treatment for acute malnutrition through April 202. Approximately 1.4 million residents remain in crisis-level or worse food insecurity. Meanwhile, despite the ceasefire's reduction of major combat, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed since it took effect, according to the United Nations.

New disruptions underline the risk. On Oct. 15, the Associated Press reported that commercial goods had not entered Gaza for two days, interrupting deliveries of products, including fruit and winter clothing. Humanitarian agencies can provide staples, but functioning markets are also needed to supply perishable foods and keep prices affordable. The shutdown's duration beyond that report was not established.

Responsibility for the stoppage was disputed. Israel's military agency overseeing humanitarian affairs, COGAT, said Palestinian merchants had stopped coordinating shipments because of fees and threats from Hamas. Gaza's private truckers union rejected that explanation and blamed Israeli restrictions.

For Kahler, the report's findings deserve neither dismissal nor celebration right now. "If you feed children, they grow," he said. But he cautioned that the survey did not follow the same children over time and that its results cannot describe the full needs of newborns, pregnant women or older residents, or measure the social and psychological damage of the ongoing displacement.

"I'm not optimistic," he said.

Kahler, who practiced pediatrics for more than four decades, co-founded MedGlobal with Sahloul after humanitarian work in Aleppo, Syria. A Catholic educated in Catholic schools for 18 years, he traces his commitment to humanitarian service to the social justice teachings of his youth and said his faith shaped a lasting obligation to prioritize people living in poverty.

"The need and the willingness to privilege the poor," he said, is something his faith instilled in him. "That's the soul that drives the machine."

Sahloul also said he resists interpreting these numbers as evidence that Gaza's health system is secure when hospitals remain damaged, medical evacuations are difficult, and patients with cancer or other conditions still struggle to obtain treatment outside the territory. The return of some food supplies cannot replace destroyed homes, schools or hospitals.

"There is improvement, definitely, but there is a huge fragility," he said. "People are dying just waiting for treatment."