Latest news with #PaulaTobin
RTÉ News
16-05-2025
- Health
- RTÉ News
"Every function of the hospital is impacted by not being able to get the aid in"
Paula Tobin, Nurse at Humanitarian Medical Aid Charity UK Med based in Gaza, discusses providing medical assistance to people amidst Israeli bombardment and a continued aid blockade.
Daily Mirror
12-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
'I'm a Brit nurse in Gaza - kids beg me for food and we're running out of time'
Nurse Paula Tobin, 57, is five weeks into her fourth deployment to Gaza since March 2024, working alongside UK-Med, and said the situation has never been so dire A British aid worker has detailed the horrors of working in a hospital inside Gaza's warzone as she warns that food will run out this week. The stricken enclave has been suffering under an aid blockade by Israel since March 2, before resuming military action in the territory on 18 March. Both steps, it said, aim to pressure Hamas to release hostages. Registered nurse Paula Tobin, 57, is five weeks into her fourth deployment to the region since March 2024, working alongside UK-Med. The UK-based NGO is providing healthcare in Gaza through two field hospitals, one in Al Mawasi and one in Deir Al Balah. These hospitals, equipped with operating theatres, maternity units, and rehabilitation services, are essential for providing medical care to those affected by the conflict. Paula says the situation has never been so dire as she pleaded: "We're running out of aid." "Absolutely nothing has come into the country since March 2," she explained. "We managed to to stockpile a lot before, during the ceasefire, but that's a long time ago now, and we're treating more and more patients. "We've got three facilities; the Type Two field hospital, which has got inpatient beds and operating theatre, a Type One, which is more of an outpatient GP facility, and then we support the emergency department at Nasser Medical Complex." In April alone, UK-MED saw and treated 36,000 patients in Gaza. Paula explains: "Our biggest problems at the moment are the fuel restrictions. There's no fuel coming in anymore. We've got a small stockpile, but we're already turning everything off for four hours of the day in the hospital, so no power in the hospital for two, 2-hour periods. We're having to turn it off to try and conserve it as much as we can, then we have to turn it back on if there's an emergency." But it's not just fuel supplies that are running low. Food supplies are dwindling and their patients are currently receiving just one meal a day. "The world's Central Kitchen have been feeding our patients and our staff from the minute we opened the hospital," says Paula. "Today was the first day that they've been unable to give us any food for our patients. "We've built up a small amount. We can probably feed our patients for one more week and then our patients will get no food. There's no food for them to buy in the local market, so even if we ask their families to go out and buy some food for each patient, there's nothing for them to buy. "People are regularly coming and saying, 'Have you got anything I can give my children? I've got no food for my children'. "It's just so difficult. This is the first time that we've got to the point where we're nearly out of food and we can't feed patients anymore." Terrifyingly, medical supplies are also running low, with aid workers on the ground scrambling to trade with other organisations for their most-needed supplies. The UK-Med T2 field hospital lead explains: "There are other agencies in the country doing the same thing, running field hospitals, and some local hospitals are still functioning. We're all just swapping as much as we can but there's some important stuff that everybody is running out of. "Very soon we won't be able to do any blood tests. It's getting really difficult to manage resources and at the same time, we're seeing more and more patients with critical and severe injuries because there is no safe zone anymore, so there have been lots of targets around our hospital." However, Palestinians are spurred on by holding onto the hope that fresh supplies could reach them imminently. "The local staff are all saying, 'it's gonna be next week,' and then next week, nothing comes. They're all very hopeful it'll come soon, but we're just not hearing anything," Paula sighs. The field hospitals, equipped with operating theatres, maternity units, and rehabilitation services, are essential for providing medical care to those affected by the conflict and therefore operate 24 hours a day. There, five GPs see between 600 and 700 patients a day, running primary health clinics and outpatient clinics as well as supplementary nutrition feeding, which has inevitably become more and more difficult as the population becomes desperate for the food. "It can get very crowded and very agitated during the day," says Paula. "Afternoons and evenings are maybe a bit quieter, but then if there are any patients coming in with severe injuries... if we get lots of them in one go, then we'll be up for most of the night as well." Paula, who, back home, works as an NHS emergency department senior clinical nurse, says she "can't complain" about her "basic" accommodation, situated right next to the T2, although it's world's away from her home in Tavistock, Devon. "We've got water, we've got a roof over our head, we've got some basic foods. It's liveable, and we're only here for six weeks at a time. "The people of Gaza are living in in mass tented camps. One day they might be told to move - where do you go in the middle of the night with all the children? How do you set up home in another tent? Where do you find the space? "So I can't complain at all because it's nothing compared to what the people outside these walls are living in." The harrowing reality of life for the people of Palestine means the malnutrition rate in pregnant women is rising, children have no safe zone, no clean water and very little food. "Children haven't been to to school even for over a year, which is having a huge impact on every aspect of their life is," Paula added. "We're seeing local staff are coming in almost regularly now having lost family members overnight. "Every part of your life that you could think of has completely changed for them - and not in a good way. "I look at the women and the little children and I just think, 'They've got nothing to do with this conflict.' Two-year-olds running around in the dirt with no shoes.. What if that was your child?" Paula has "no idea" what the next few weeks, or even days, will look like, as their supplies run critically low with no sign of aid being let back in. "The health service alone is completely running out of everything. Other hospitals have stopped feeding their patients. They're they're running out of fuel. They won't be able to function. How do you do an operating theatre without any, any electricity at all? "If you run out of fuel, then, then what happens? How do we, how do we continue? If we run out of medicines, how do we treat people with blast injuries, how do we give them antibiotics if we don't have any? "People will die of injuries that they don't need to die of. It's just an impossible situation."
BBC News
20-02-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Devon nurse honoured with humanitarian medal by King
Devon nurse Paula Tobin has told of her pride at being presented with a Humanitarian Medal by King Charles for her life-saving work in Tobin, 57, from Tavistock, was awarded the honour in a ceremony at Buckingham spent four months in Gaza, over three different deployments, volunteering for frontline medical charity UK-Med, and is due to return again in Tobin said: "I found it much easier packing my bag to go out to Gaza than deciding what to wear to Buckingham Palace to meet the King." Mum 'over the moon' The field hospitals where she worked in Al Mawasi and Deir El Balah, established with Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) funding, have treated more than 300,000 patients. "It is lovely to have my work recognised and my mum was absolutely over the moon when she heard the news," said Ms Tobin."Being able to take her to the palace hopefully goes a long way to making up for all the worry I've put her through over the years."A veteran of humanitarian crises including the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014, Ukraine and the Turkey earthquake, she said it was "hardest for your family back home"."Gaza's been a tough one because it is so much in the news," she said. "Each time I come back and I am okay, my family get a tiny bit more relaxed, but they do say 'just don't go again'. "I've told them I am returning in April and my response is always 'you know this is me, it's what I do. I'll be fine'." Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the new medal "recognises the incredible dedication and selfless service of individuals on the frontline of the UK's responses to some of the world's most devastating crises"."I am delighted the first tranche of awards will recognise members of the UK government's emergency deployment teams, for their brave work in Libya, Morocco and Gaza," he said.
