Surgeon from Brockenhurst Nizam Mamode tells of the horrors he witnessed at Nasser hospital in Gaza while volunteering for Medical Aid for Palestinians
A SURGEON from Brockenhurst who spent a month in Gaza treating war casualties said the atrocities there were the worst he had seen in his time working as a volunteer in conflict zones around the world.
Professor Nizam Mamode (62), who volunteered in Gaza for a month with charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, and has previously worked in Lebanon and Rwanda, says the attacks on the Palestinian territory are “much, much worse than anything I have ever seen before”.
“I was profoundly shocked by what I found,” he said. “It looks like an atomic bomb has just gone off, just devastation for miles.
“The worst thing is that the people in Gaza cannot escape. In Rwanda at least civilians could leave, crossing the border to safety.
“In Gaza no one can leave. Every day, every hour they are bombed and shot at with nowhere to go.”
Nizam, who spent a month in the area, said the volunteers he worked alongside were as shocked as he was. “These are people who have been in conflict zones all over the world,” he said.
“They, like me, were stunned by how bad things are in Gaza. The bombs fall and then the drones come in and pick off the survivors as they lie injured or try to flee.
“At a major trauma centre in the UK you would expect one or two mass casualty incidents a year. In Gaza there are between 10 and 20 a day, with 10-20 dead and 20-40 seriously injured.
“Most of the casualties we treated were women and young children. Very often you have a young child brought in on their own, the rest of their family are dead.
“Many came from a supposed safe zone about the size of Christchurch which has one-and-a-half-million people crammed into it. Bombs are dropped on it all day long.”
The professor was clinical lead of transplant surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust and honorary consultant at Great Ormond Street before he retired.
He said the plight of the civilians in Gaza is made worse by the fact that Israel will not allow vital medical supplies and drugs into it.
Nizam, who was working at the Nasser Hospital in Southern Gaza, continued: “We carried out amputations, and all we had to give people for pain was paracetamol. I remember operating on a child and part way through they said, ‘That’s the last swab’.
“So, all we could do was scoop the blood out with our hands while we tried to find the source of the bleeding.
“Hygiene is non-existent as Israel will not allow things like soap and disinfectant into Gaza. Sterile gowns don’t exist.
“We saved the life of a three-year old girl who had been shot in the neck by repairing an artery, but almost inevitably afterwards she succumbed to infection and died.”
Nizam described how the hospital, which was shelled by the Israeli army in February, would “shake” as bombs exploded nearby, and he could hear the buzz of the killer drones “all day and all night”.
He said: “There was a constant level of tension. We lived at the hospital 24/7 as it is too dangerous to leave it.
“The Palestinian doctors and nurses there work seven days a week. I felt a horrendous sense of guilt when it came time for us to leave, knowing they can’t.”
Despite the danger he faced in Gaza, Nizam who appeared in the TV series The Crown as a surgeon operating on King George VI, is planning to return to it.
He said: “I am going to Lebanon soon to help treat casualties there and my hope would be if there is a ceasefire, I will return to Gaza to help with the reconstruction.”
The professor says he hopes that there will a stop to the fighting soon, adding: “Hamas has largely gone. “But at the moment for the people in Gaza there is a sense that the conflict will not end, and they are just waiting to die.”
To donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians, visit bit.ly/3UsyzAW
