‘Postapocalyptic’: UK volunteer surgeons reflect on time in Gaza
British surgeons Ammar Darwish and Nizam Mamode have been to Gaza as part of a medical team organised by the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians
Geneva Abdul reports in The Guardian on 7 October 2024:
When Dr Ammar Darwish went to Gaza in January 2024 as a volunteer medic, his team narrowly escaped an Israeli airstrike on their accommodation. By the time he returned in August, the level of destruction, the severity of patient injuries and the lack of essentials in the territory had significantly worsened.
“Gaza is one of the worst missions that I’ve done, especially this time around. It has affected me and affected the whole team,” said Darwish, a general and major trauma surgeon from Manchester who has also worked in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine. “Saving one life is a good enough reason to go back,” said Darwish, who returned from a volunteer mission with Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) in Gaza last month.
Nearly a year into the war – which began after the 7 October assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians – the Guardian spoke to volunteer healthcare workers from the UK who had travelled to Gaza in recent months.
They called on the British government to evacuate patients, apply pressure for an immediate ceasefire, and push for the opening of aid corridors as essential supplies remain at the Egyptian border.
At overcrowded hospitals, medics report operating without essentials such as surgical gowns and gauze. Malnutrition is also a huge problem, according to doctors, along with worsening sanitation and the limited access to water. Polio vaccinations started last month but a brutal reality, Darwish said, is that some of the children being vaccinated will be seen as casualties in the evening.
“I really cannot imagine how things will become in two months’ time,” he said. “After what I’ve seen there, I would really ask our UK government, our prime minister, to push forward and put pressure on all sides to have an immediate permanent ceasefire [and] to allow medical aid. “And also to protect civilians, and protect medics and medical facilities. They’re unprotected, they’re unsafe.”
A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “A resolution to this conflict, the release of all hostages still cruelly detained by Hamas, better protection for civilians, aid and medical workers, and much more aid entering Gaza has been a priority since day one of this government.”
Dr Ana Jeelani, a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon from Liverpool who travelled to Gaza’s al-Aqsa hospital in March, says the government has failed to recognise the “actual concerns that we have as humanitarian aid workers”. Jeelani said the UK had failed to take a single patient from Gaza. The United Arab Emirates, Spain and the European Union have evacuated severely sick and injured patients, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “I work in a trust that openly accepted Ukrainian refugees and provided them cancer care, NHS care, and we have been told that we cannot accept patients from Gaza because the government have not allowed this,” she said. “How can we be a developed country and not allow a single patient into our hospitals when there is such a massive man-made catastrophe happening?”
Aid and health workers account for at least 765 of the more than 41,000 people killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to the WHO and the Palestinian health ministry. Of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, 32 are damaged and 17 are partially functioning, according to the WHO.