The extermination of more than 74,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom were women, children, and the elderly, did not quench the occupation’s bloodlust. It engineered an endless cycle of death, continuing to claim the lives of Gazans. The crimes even extended to fetuses in their mothers’ wombs, with high rates of miscarriage and births of children with congenital deformities.
The cases now overwhelming the hospitals in the Gaza Strip, along with testimonies from doctors and women, reveal a catastrophe in reproductive health, according to medical professionals. This is all happening as the occupation continues its criminal policies aimed at completing its genocide. To this end, it continues to drop tons of explosives, causing direct massacres and spreading toxins that continue to ravage the bodies of Gazans in the short and long term.
Data from the Gaza Ministry of Health indicates that 460 miscarriages per 1,000 live births were recorded in April 2026, compared to only about 140 before the war—an unprecedented surge reflecting the scale of the disaster that has befallen the health environment in the Gaza Strip.
An investigation published by the Gaza Ministry of Health on miscarriages, covering the period from January 2025 to April 2026, revealed a sharp decline in the uterine environment’s ability to support continued pregnancy, warning of health and demographic repercussions that could last for years.
The investigation showed that the rate of anemia among pregnant women reached 57%, nearly double the global average, indicating the extent of the collapse in food security and the severe shortage of essential nutrients. This makes women’s bodies more susceptible to pregnancy loss and limits the ability of fetuses to develop normally, a direct result of the starvation and siege policies imposed by the occupation. The investigation also recorded a sharp decline in the number of births in the Gaza Strip, dropping from 6,076 births in November 2025 to only 2,004 births in April 2026, a decrease of 67%. The Ministry of Health considers these indicators to point to a state of “fetal depletion,” as the community is unable to compensate for its human losses in light of the significant increase in abortion rates, declining fertility, and the ongoing war.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza warned that 2026 could witness a projected 70.7% increase in abortions, with the rate potentially exceeding 500 cases per 1,000 births. It is estimated that approximately half of all pregnancies in the Gaza Strip will experience complications of varying degrees.
Doctors working in Gaza hospitals believe that these figures only reflect the cases that were able to reach health institutions, while a large part of the other cases remain undocumented, due to the conditions of war and the difficulty of accessing hospitals, or because they are located inside displacement centers and tents, where women lack basic medical care.
