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Arab News
5 days ago
- Health
- Arab News
British medics say Gaza is ‘televised genocide' and ‘unlike anything' seen in war zones
LONDON: British healthcare workers volunteering to treat patients in the Gaza Strip report witnessing harrowing injuries, including severe burns and shrapnel wounds as well as cases of extreme starvation due to Israeli attacks and restrictions on aid. Sam Sears, a 44-year-old paramedic, told the British tabloid Metro that the range of injuries he has seen at a humanitarian medical tent facility in Al-Mawasi, on the southern coast of Gaza, includes blast injuries, shrapnel wounds, gunshot wounds and polytrauma. He is volunteering with the UK-Med charity as part of a team responding to starvation in Gaza, following the emergence of distressing images of malnourished Palestinians, including some infants, which have prompted widespread condemnation, including from the UK government. 'It's unlike anything I've seen before,' Sears said. 'Especially like nothing I've seen in the UK, and I have worked in other areas like Sierra Leone for Ebola and Ukraine in the war, but this here is completely different. It's like times ten here. 'We are struggling for food here at the moment, let alone (Palestinian) staff that are working with us who have had to manage this for the last 20 months.' He said that medical volunteers have been working tirelessly despite limited supplies, including fuel, and it was 'very obvious (that) we have got malnourishment in the community.' 'We can buy certain things from the market but it's very scarce, it's also costing quadruple or more than what it normally would. A kilogram of sugar at the minute is costing $130, so it's just extortionate,' he said. The UK-Med charity operates two field hospitals in Gaza, treating 500 people daily, and includes an operating theater for lifesaving surgical procedures. 'The ceasefire is needed, not just a pause but a permanent end to the hostilities,' Sears said. 'The people in Gaza have suffered immensely, they have got nowhere to call home ... They are hungry, malnourished, the conflict needs to stop really.' 'The healthcare and aid needs to come in for the 2.1 million people who it's needed for here,' he added. Dr. Tom Potokar, a veteran British plastic surgeon who has volunteered in various Palestinian hospitals and has visited Gaza 16 times since 2018, said that the healthcare system is overwhelmed with severe burn victims from Israel's military actions. Dr. Potokar told the Telegraph newspaper that he had been operating on 10 to 12 patients suffering burns from blasts each day, with three-quarters of those cases being women or children. 'That's taking the top-10 priority, but there's still plenty more behind that that needed operating,' he said. He volunteered nearly two years ago during the initial six weeks after Israel began its attacks on the Gaza Strip in late 2023. He is the founder of the medical charity Interburns, established in 2006, which addresses the lack of burns expertise in poorer nations and war zones. When he arrived for the first time in Gaza in 2018, he discovered that there were only two fully qualified plastic surgeons, one of whom was partially retired. His most recent visit, with the Ideals international aid charity, was in May and June, during which he witnessed terrible injuries from explosions. 'I saw many cases of bilateral or triple limb amputations, huge open wounds on the back, on the chest, with the lung exposed. Really horrendous blast injuries from shrapnel, and as I say, a lot of them combined with burns as well,' he said. The most devastating cases involved children, with some cases sustaining about 90 percent burns. 'There's nothing you can do. Even if there was not a conflict there, in that country, in that scenario, a 90 percent burn (case) when it's almost all full thickness is not going to survive,' he said. 'But then you are talking about a nine-year-old and some end-of-life dignity, and unfortunately they don't die in a couple of hours, it takes four or five days, so you see this patient every four or five days, knowing full well that there's absolutely nothing you can do.' Dr. Potokar described treating patients who are 'skin and bone' due to Israeli aid restrictions leading to mass starvation in Gaza. 'Wounds are just stagnating because they are just not getting food.' He said that he lost 11 kg during his recent trip, despite bringing food with him. His Palestinian medical colleagues appeared increasingly fatalistic, he said, as more than 100 human rights organizations warned this week that some staff members have become too weak to continue their work due to food shortages. Dr. Potokar described Gaza as the 'world's first televised genocide' and said that there was a lack of response to end the war in the coastal enclave. 'We are putting plasters on a haemorrhaging aneurysm. The problem is the political initiative, the total lack of global, moral, ethical insight into this and desire to stop it,' he said.
Metro
5 days ago
- Health
- Metro
'I'm a medic in Gaza - the suffering is ten times anything I've ever witnessed'
A British paramedic volunteering at a field hospital in Gaza has described the suffering as 'unlike anything I've seen' in frontline healthcare. Sam Sears said a voluntary team with UK-Med is responding to starvation and the aftermath of mass casualty incidents involving civilians. He spoke from the humanitarian medical charity's tented facility in Al-Mawasi, a strip of land by the Mediterranean, a day after more than 100 aid agencies warned in a joint statement that 'mass starvation is spreading' across Gaza, with the UN-led humanitarian system in collapse. Sears told Metro: 'We are seeing lots of patients in the local area coming in with blast injuries, shrapnel wounds, gunshot wounds, poly trauma and we are also seeing a lot of malnourished, dehydrated patients. 'Normally we see patients after a food distribution point, we tend to get a lot of patients with those wounds soon after they happen. 'We are not sure of the why, where and when it happened, but they are coming in with gunshot wounds to all parts of the body and shrapnel from nearby explosions.' Pictures of starving Palestinians, some of them babies, have emerged from Gaza in the past weeks as the situation worsens by the hour. Accounts of the injuries from UK-Med volunteers align with separate reports of desperate civilians coming under fire from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as they try to reach the few aid locations in the territory. Israel has denied deliberately targeting civilians and has accused Hamas of looting aid so it can sell the produce and supply its war machine. 'It's unlike anything I've seen before,' Sears said. 'Especially like nothing I've seen in the UK, and I have worked in other areas like Sierra Leone for Ebola and Ukraine in the war but this here is completely different. It's like times ten here. 'We are struggling for food here at the moment, let alone national staff that are working with us who have had to manage this for the last 20 months.' David Wightwick, the non-governmental organisation's CEO, has described collecting food in Gaza as 'one of the most dangerous activities you could wish to imagine' and said that civilians are starving. He gave the example of an eight-year-old girl with a gunshot wound to the head who could not be saved, despite the medics' best efforts. 'When we have a mass casualty incident, it's where explosions happen nearby from a missile or something similar to that, and patients will arrive, three or four in the back in the car,' Sears said. 'We had one last week, a child who was dead on arrival along with his father, we believe, and countless patients severely critically injured, wounds that we had to treat very quickly.' The team has been working around the clock amid scarce supplies, including fuel, which is needed for the field hospital's own provision. Sears, who is on his first trip to Gaza, said: 'We are seeing in our hospitals and our primary health care centre we have in the north, it's very obvious we have got malnourishment in the community. 'We are seeing pregnant mothers who are struggling to continue as they become more unwell, because obviously they are carrying as well, so that's an issue. We can buy certain things from the market but it's very scarce, it's also costing quadruple or more than what it normally would. 'A kilogram of sugar at the minute is costing $130, so it's just extortionate.' Sears, 44, from Northamptonshire, works for the East Midlands Ambulance Service but is one of hundreds of NHS medics who volunteer for the charity as emergency responders in crisis zones worldwide. He said that he is part of a 'very good' team where there are regular debriefs as well as feedback after patients undergo surgery. The field hospital, one of two operated by the charity in Gaza, is currently treating 500 people a day and incorporates an operating theatre for lifesaving surgical procedures. The paramedic told Metro that he is hoping for a ceasefire to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video 'The ceasefire is needed, not just a pause but a permanent end to the hostilities,' he said. 'The people in Gaza have suffered immensely, they have got nowhere to call home. 'They are hungry, malnourished, the conflict needs to stop really. 'The healthcare and aid needs to come in for the 2.1 million people who it's needed for here.' More Trending Israel is 'evaluating' a revised response from Hamas to a proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said today. In a post on X, the IDF said: 'Terrorists fired a projectile that fell approx. 250 meters from an aid distribution site in Gaza. 'This site in Rafah is open today and tens of thousands of weekly food packages were distributed. 'Hamas and the other terrorist organizations will do anything to sabotage civilians from receiving aid.' MORE: The pictures that show the scale of 'mass starvation' in Gaza MORE: Aid worker's desperate voice message from Gaza: 'It's a disaster here, we can't breathe.' MORE: Doctor's heartbreaking decisions choosing which babies live or die in Gaza
