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Reveal

In Gaza, Every Pregnancy is Complicated

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After six months of war in Gaza, the Palestinian medical infrastructure has collapsed, leaving tens of thousands of pregnant women without a safe place to deliver. Reporters Gabrielle Berbey and Salman Ahad Khan follow one mother over the final months of her pregnancy after she’s forced to leave behind her home, work and doctor in Gaza City.

We begin with the reporters’ first call to Lubna Al Rayyes five weeks into the war, as she is seven months pregnant with her third child. Before the war’s start on Oct. 7, Al Rayyes ran a prestigious school in Gaza City and her husband owned a clothing store. After being forced to evacuate their home, they fled to Khan Younis, but that city soon came under attack by the Israeli military as well. After being in regular contact with Al Rayyes for more than a month, the reporters lost contact with her.

Berbey and Khan then track down Al Rayyes’ sister, who was able to leave Gaza and relocate to Canada because of her husband’s Canadian citizenship. Canada’s Palestinian community lobbied the government to create an asylum program for displaced people in Gaza, but the program became mired in delays. Berbey and Khan eventually reconnect with Al Rayyes, who explains what happened with her delivery.

Beyond the collapse of the medical system, the health of Palestinians in Gaza is threatened by food shortages. Khan speaks with Tessa Roseboom, a Dutch researcher who’s been looking at how famine affects the development of babies in their mothers’ womb. We then meet Dr. Ghassan Jawad, an OB-GYN from Gaza who was forced to deliver babies in cars, shelters and even on the street as the medical system stopped functioning. Jawad had worked at Al-Shifa hospital, which was heavily damaged in a recent attack by the Israeli military.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is reveal.

0:08.6

I'm Al Letzen.

0:10.4

Back in October, just a few weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli counterattack that followed,

0:17.0

a Palestinian journalist named Bessan Oda visited Alshifa Hospital in Gaza City.

0:24.0

Bessan makes her way to the maternity ward.

0:27.0

She's interviewing women for the United Nations Population Fund about what it's like to be

0:36.7

pregnant and give birth in this war.

0:41.3

The stories are hard to listen to.

0:45.0

A 30 year old woman is in the hospital after having a miscarriage while her neighborhood was bombed.

0:53.0

The doctor was killed, my first animal.

0:56.0

Another woman tells the reporter, she just had a C-section after her house was bombed. Her older son was killed in the bombing.

1:07.6

I was saying, what did you talk with them?

1:11.1

What are you, I'm sure?

1:12.3

I'm not sure what I'm not fickale, I'm

1:14.0

paying. Paying close attention to these stories

1:17.0

were two reporters based in New York,

1:20.0

Gabriel Burbe and Salmama'an Ahad Khan.

1:23.3

They wanted to know more about the women in Gaza

1:25.8

who were pregnant, and there are 155,000 pregnant

1:30.4

and breastfeeding women at high risk of malnutrition in Gaza right now, according to the

1:36.1

United Nations.

1:38.4

How are these women planning for their deliveries?

...

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