A medic from Greater Manchester has described the “apocalyptic” conditions he witnessed while working as a field medic in Gaza.
Dr Matt Newport, who is from Ramsbottom and works at the Royal Blackburn Hospital, has been in the war-torn region three times this year with charity UK-Med.
He said that 40% of the “dramatically injured patients” UK-Med field hospitals received were children.
Dr Newport said the experience had made him hug his daughter “that little bit tighter”.
The anaesthetist said he regularly encountered gunshot wounds and lost limbs.
“It’s the huge number of wounded children and women that has left a real impact on me – right down to babies just a day or two old and weighing just a couple of kilograms,” he said.
“As a first-time father of a two-year-old, seeing displaced, frightened, parentless, and traumatically injured children has been quite challenging,” he added.
He and his colleagues often found themselves working to the sound of gunfire and explosions.
Dr Newport, 37, said the conflict “needs to come to an end”, with “civilians coming to harm through no fault of their own on both sides”.
He spoke of “huge issues” getting medical supplies across the border and “running the gauntlet” of organised criminal gangs with assault rifles.
He said that working in Gaza had made him reflect on how grateful he was for the NHS.
“Returning to the NHS, I have any bit of equipment and medication I need at the drop of a hat and it makes me really sad that the excellent Palestinian medics I worked with often don’t have the most basic resources through no fault of their own,” said Dr Newport
The medic said he planned to “keep going back and doing what I can”, adding that he felt it important to show his daughter how important it was to do such humanitarian work.
The UK-Med charity is part of the UK Government’s humanitarian response to the Israel/Gaza crisis.
A UK-Med spokesperson said the charity was now running two Foreign Office-funded field hospitals based in Al Mawasi and Deir El Balah, which have treated more than 100,000 patients in Gaza so far.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza estimates that more than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since conflict broke out following the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Israel has consistently questioned the credibility of the information. In May, the Foreign Minister Israel Katz described it as “fake data from a terrorist organisation”.
Source: BBC
