Please find linked in French and English the October 2025 Médecins du Monde (MdM) report on the restricted access to SRHR services and the consequences for women’s, girls’ and newborns’ health in the Gaza strip (October 2025). Between May 2024 and August 2025, MdM witnessed repeated attacks on health centers and a dramatic shortage of staff and essential supplies in Gaza.
In the context of continuous attacks, communities’ displacement and appalling living conditions, access to SRHR and in particular prenatal care, emergency obstetric services, family planning, and protection against sexual and gender-based violence has been severely hampered. Malnutrition, displacement, disrupted care, and lack of access to menstrual hygiene products severely worsen women’s health and put the lives of their infants at risk.
Between May 2024 and August 2025, MdM observed:
- A sharp increase in genital infections with potential long-term effects on infertility, chronic pelvic pain and recurrent pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancies, and cervical cancer from persistent high-risk HPV infections;
- An 8-fold increase in high-risk pregnancies;
- A high prevalence of menstrual disorders;
- A decrease of the above effects during the January-March ceasefire period, proving the impact of war and blockade of humanitarian assistance on women’s and girls’ health.
The report stresses that the disproportionate effects of Israeli military attacks on women’s and girls’ health could be considered “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the [Palestinian] group” and to some extent “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” as per Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. These consequences could be reversed by the cessation of hostilities and a large influx of humanitarian aid.
SOURCE: Marie Lussier, Médecins du Monde, Paris. E-mail: 27 October 2025. Note, however, that Israel broke the ceasefire regularly. VISUAL: Gaza becoming a ‘graveyard for children,’ UN chief warns as calls for ceasefire intensify | CNN
–Médecins du Monde has been working throughout the occupied Palestinian territory for more than 20 years with a team of 120 people in Gaza and 78 in the West Bank.