Healthcare workers stage Gaza protest march in Dublin

RTÉ News​

2 days ago

Healthcare workers led hundreds of demonstrators opposing the ongoing war in Gaza in a silent march through Dublin city centre.
It was organised by Irish Healthcare Workers for Palestine, an informal group of more than 500 healthcare workers in Ireland.
Dublin-based GP and Medical Director of Safetynet, Dr Angy Skuce, said it was their largest demonstration to date.
She believes many were motivated to join today's silent protest, because people are now "watching the slow starvation of everybody in Gaza".
"So for 20 months we have been watching our colleagues being bombed, shot at, abducted, killed, but now we are actually watching them in real time slowly starving to death," Dr Skuce said.
"We're in regular contact with people over there, we're getting videos from doctors, nurses and ambulance staff over there, and over the last few months we've actually watched them get thinner and thinner and thinner," she added.
"They are dying themselves and they are also trying to save people who are brought into their hospital, dying," Dr Skuce said.
Among those leading the demonstration was Dr Ahmad Adjina, a GP in Templeogue in Dublin, who is originally from Gaza.
"I have two cousins who are doctors, one is a surgeon in northern Gaza, another is in the south," Dr Adjina said, "whatever they can do, they do it".
"If they had the equipment they would stay 24 hours working but they don't have that, and that's the issue," Dr Adjina said.
"The other thing is they are moving from place to place to place to place, I don't know how they are surviving," he said.
His wife Fatima Jabr is also from Gaza and she attended today's march along with their son.
"It's getting worse and worse and worse every day," Ms Jabr said.
"I just want to thank the Irish people, no words can say how grateful we are, honestly," Ms Jabr said, as she broke down in tears, "the support we have gotten from Irish people is beyond words".
Demonstrators carried placards with the names and photos of some of Palestinian doctors that have been killed, while others highlighted the chronic shortages of basic medical supplies in Gaza, such as anesthetics and gauze.
Medics also carried a stretcher with bandaged dolls through the streets, to represent the war's civilian child causalties.
In silence, protesters began their march outside the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland on St Stephen's Green and made their way slowly and solemnly through an otherwise busy Grafton Street.
They were met with spontaneous applause as they turned onto South William Street before walking passed the Gaiety Theatre and St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre and returning to RSCI.
There, Dr George Little, a consultant in emergency medicine, addressed the crowd.
He told those gathered that healthcare workers had "a moral obligation, an ethical obligation and professional obligation to protect human rights".
"In the last week we have begun to see the overt signs of starvation" in Gaza, Dr Little told RTÉ News.
"I think that has a visceral response, particularly for Irish people, that's what it looks like, that's what forced starvation looks like."