An image (here & here) depicting a child suffering from starvation is circulating widely across social media platforms, with the claim that it depicts a Palestinian child from Gaza who died due to hunger because of Israeli military action. In this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo depicting an emaciated Palestinian child from Gaza suffering from starvation.
Fact: According to reports, the viral photo dates back to December 2020 and depicts 7-year-old Faid Samim, a Yemeni boy suffering from cerebral palsy (CP) and severe malnutrition, who was admitted to Al-Sabeen Hospital in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
For context, according to news reports (here & here), the WHO chief has stated that children are dying of starvation in northern Gaza. On 6 March 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that at least 20 Palestinians have died of malnutrition in hospitals, with a potentially higher number succumbing due to the inability to access assistance. According to CNN, displaced Palestinians are struggling to feed their children as Israel has imposed severe restrictions on aid.
To authenticate the viral claim and gather more information about the image, we conducted a Google reverse image search. This search led us to several news reports (here, here & here) that featured the same viral image, with Reuters cited as the image source. These reports, published in January 2021, identified the child in the viral photo as 7-year-old Faid Samim, a Yemeni boy suffering from cerebral palsy (CP) and severe malnutrition, who was admitted to Al-Sabeen Hospital in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. According to Reuters, Samim weighs only 7 kg. Samim’s family had to travel from Al-Jawf province, 170 km north of the capital Sanaa, through many checkpoints and rough roads, to bring the boy to the capital for treatment. The viral image captures Faid Samim lying curled up on a hospital bed in the malnutrition treatment ward of Al-Sabeen Hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, on 28 December 2020. Based on this information, it is evident that the viral photo depicts a 7-year-old Yemeni child named Faid Samim lying in a hospital bed in the year 2020.
To sum it up, this viral image shows a Yemeni child suffering from cerebral palsy and severe malnutrition, and the image dates back to 2020.
