Gaza toddler evacuated to Italy shows signs of recovery from rare disease and severe malnutrition

When two-year-old Shamm Qudeih arrived in Italy from Gaza last month, she was emaciated and barely clinging to life.

She recently celebrated her birthday in a Naples hospital, gained weight on a special diet, and has begun to smile again - small but remarkable steps welcomed by the doctors treating her for severe malnutrition, made worse by a rare genetic disease.

Just weeks ago, the toddler was all skin and bones as she clung to her mother in a hospital in southern Gaza, after months of being unable to get the food and treatment she needed because of an Israeli blockade aimed at pressuring the Hamas militant group to release hostages.

Video filmed on 9 August by Associated Press freelancer Mariam Dagga showed Shamm, in hospital, wincing in her mother’s arms, her ribs protruding. Just days later, the toddler was evacuated to Italy with six other children for urgent treatment. The footage was among the last Dagga ever shot - she was killed on 25 August in an Israeli strike on the same hospital.

Now, almost a month later, Shamm sits up in bed at Naples’ Santobono Pausilipon Children’s Hospital, a T-shirt reading “cute” across her chest. She lights up when her mother and sister call her name.

Dr. Daniele de Brasi, the pediatric genetics disease specialist who is treating the little girl at Santobono Pausilipon Children’s Hospital in Naples, says she was “in a serious and challenging clinical state" when she arrived, weighing around four kilograms (9 pounds).

She now weighs 5.5 kilograms (just over 12 pounds), which is still no more than half of the median weight for a child of her age, according to de Brasi.

The doctor says “a big part” of her undernourishment was due to a genetic metabolic disease called glycogen storage disease, which preliminary tests have confirmed.

Shamm suffered from malnutrition from her birth, just weeks before the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas-led militants.

Her mother, Islam, struggled to get her proper medical care, visiting many hospitals and clinics. "The environment where Shamm had to live affected her so much. We have been displaced maybe about 15 times, from tent to tent. We walked long distances and along the way it was hot and the sun was hitting us. There were no possibilities at all," she explained.

In Naples, the toddler now receives nutrients overnight through a feeding tube, while during the day she eats porridge, meat, and fish - foods long out of reach in Gaza. Her 10-year-old sister Judi, also underweight, has gained two kilograms since arriving.

Malnutrition in Gaza

Shamm's recovery comes against the backdrop of Gaza’s deepening hunger crisis. Last month, the United Nations warned that starvation and malnutrition in Gaza were at the highest levels since the war began.

Nearly 12,000 children under age five were found to have acute malnutrition in July - including more than 2,500 with severe malnutrition, the most dangerous level. The World Health Organization says the numbers are likely an undercount.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said no one is starving in Gaza and that enough aid has been supplied during the war, "otherwise, there would be no Gazans".