Bringing a child into the world in Gaza has become an act of profound courage. The war has devastated everyday life and brought the health system to the brink of collapse. Out of 36 hospitals, only 18 remain even partially functional, leaving a massive gap in care for an estimated 55,000 pregnant women.
Yet in this devastation, determined health workers continue to stand firm.
Supported by EU Humanitarian Aid, midwives are the last lifeline for the 150 babies born every day.
Among them is Heyam, herself displaced, who works in an overstretched maternity unit, upholding the fragile threads of maternal and newborn care in conditions no professional should ever have to face.
The fight for a first breath
Heyam describes days filled with back-to-back deliveries, little rest, and the constant pressure of caring for mothers who arrive exhausted, traumatised, malnourished and dehydrated, often without having received any antenatal care. Basic resources are now luxuries: water is scarce, soap unaffordable and electricity cuts out during critical moments of delivery. Rooms are overcrowded, with women giving birth without privacy, in spaces meant for close medical monitoring. For many, even reaching the hospital is life-threatening after repeated attacks on medical facilities.
In this environment, Heyam is not only a medical professional: she is an emotional anchor. She stabilises mothers with life-threatening haemorrhages, supports those experiencing obstructed labour and performs basic neonatal resuscitation with limited or non-existent equipment.
She helps women find the strength to give birth when they feel they have no one left.
With only around 2,000 hospital beds for more than 2 million people in Gaza, and a severe shortage of ventilators for newborns, even the simplest tasks are a struggle. At the Al-Helal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital in Rafah, premature babies share cots and incubators, tubes and monitors offering a fragile lifeline in a unit running on unstable electricity. Some maternity wards operate without running water entirely.
Heyam and her colleagues, including Saja, rely on targeted emergency training and critical supplies:
- clean delivery kits
- postpartum items
- essential medicines
Among others these are provided through UNFPA’s partnership with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), with support from EU Humanitarian Aid. This assistance helps keep maternity units functioning and enables midwives like Heyam to step in when an incubator is full, or a mother is collapsing from exhaustion.
Holding life together
The dedication of Heyam and Gaza's midwives reflects extraordinary human resilience. Despite losing their own homes and suffering alongside their communities, they show up every day. Their hands, though tired, continue to uphold the care that thousands of women depend on, protecting mothers and newborns when support is needed most.
They are not only delivering babies. They are helping hold families together, one birth at a time.
