“It is now well established that the children of Gaza are starving and require immediate and sustained humanitarian assistance,” write Jessica Fanzo of Columbia University, Paul Wise of Stanford University and Zulfiqar Bhutta of Aga Khan University in Pakistan and the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada. After two years of war and dire food shortages, more than 54,600 children younger than 5 in Gaza may be acutely malnourished, with more than 12,800 severely affected, according to a new study by a United Nations agency. The study, published in The Lancet medical journal, is the most comprehensive study of child hunger in the region to date, the authors said. It relied on screenings of nearly 220,000 children from dozens of health centres and medical sites in Gaza between January 2024 and mid-August.