In Gaza over the last week, explains Emma Graham-Harrison, starvation has killed more Palestinians than it has in the previous 21 months of war combined.

After months of a near total Israeli blockade of aid into the strip – and months of warning from food experts – a dreadful tipping point seems to have been reached. As a UN-backed body declared on Monday, a famine is now unfolding in Gaza.

Graham-Harrison tells Lucy Hough how we got to this point, and how Israel has belatedly begun to respond to international pressure to allow more food into Gaza. Still, she says, it seems nowhere near enough.

Surgeon Nick Maynard, recently returned from a month’s volunteering in southern Gaza, describes the famine he witnessed, and how it affected his work at Nasser hospital. He responds too to the action of the UK government this week – and its proposals to recognise a Palestine state in September.

A malnourished Palestinian child sits on the floor with his mother Photograph: Haitham Imad/EPA