Dr Mamode has volunteered in several conflict zones but said the horror in Gaza was beyond imagination [PALM MEDIA]
In 2024, British humanitarian surgeon Dr Nizam Mamode was asked to speak to the International Development Committee about the current state of Gaza’s healthcare system.
An emotional Dr Mamode detailed Israel’s relentless bombing of areas it had designated as “humanitarian safe zones” in the Gaza Strip and the treatment of children injured in these Israeli attacks.
Even with a truce in place, one with no guarantee of surviving the first phase, the situation in Gaza is bleak and the experiences endured by Palestinians during the past 15 months are harrowing beyond words.
Mamode told The New Arab that he felt he had to speak about his experiences in Gaza but that it was “difficult to do“.
“It’s always difficult to go over some of the experiences that you’ve had, it opens up old wounds, really,” he said
Mamode has always wanted to use his medical skills to help people in conflict zones, previously volunteering in countries such as Sudan, Nicaragua, and Rwanda.
He said Gaza was the most horrific war zone he had experienced – even more horrific than Rwanda during the 1994 genocide there.
“Gaza was ten times worse, it was a completely different level from anything I’d ever experienced before,” he said.
“Indeed, everybody who was working there, who had any experience of conflict zones, said exactly the same thing.”
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 47,460 people. mostly women and children, and injured 111,580 others.
Over 90% of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have been uprooted, many of them multiple times, while hospitals and other essential infrastructure have been decimated, in a campaign widely described as a genocide.
Israel’s siege on Gaza has also deprived the population of food, medicine, and essential humanitarian aid.
“I don’t think there’s any healthcare facility in Gaza which is able to deliver proper care at the moment,” Dr Mamode told The New Arab.
Along with restricting medical supplies, the surgeon details “very clear attacks” by Israel on Gaza’s medical personnel and hospital.
Treatments usually considered routine are no longer feasible, and remaining medical specialists “are very few and far between”.
“I think one thing that people don’t realise is that in Gaza at the moment, the treatment of the ‘normal diseases’ if you like, that people experience all the time, is virtually impossible,” Dr Mamode says.
“The standard diseases that people present with are not really being treated, and as a result, people are dying or suffering from severe problems.”
“I amputated a number of limbs that otherwise would have been saved under normal circumstances.”
Malnutrition has become “a lot worse”, infectious diseases are now rife in Gaza, with polio – a disease that was absent from the enclave for decades – making a comeback, and cholera “likely to happen”.
The surgeon noted that along with dealing with the spread of “atrocious conditions” for over a year, medical staff have also had to deal with mass casualties day after day after day, horrific injuries, without any let-up.
Mamode said that all the medical staff in Gaza are really struggling psychologically but with no help.
“There isn’t really any psychological care for them, so I think it’s a major issue,” he said.
“I think all of us have struggled since we’ve been back.”
Due to World Health Organisation (WHO) regulations, his team was only allowed to stay in the enclave for one month at a time, and leaving Gaza, Mamode admits, was not an easy thing to do.
“It was very, very difficult to leave,” Mamode says.
“We certainly all felt guilty at going because we could come back to a normal life here, whereas people we left behind were still suffering.”
Following the ceasefire in Gaza, there are hopes that rebuilding can potentially take place.
While Dr Mamode believes it’s too early to ask whether the truce will hold, if it does, the surgeon says he will go back to Gaza to help with reconstruction. If it does not, he will continue to do the same work he was doing before in the enclave.
“If there’s no ceasefire, people will be blown to pieces. So, of course, the ceasefire is going to help,” the surgeon says.
Mamode explained that the entire enclave needs to be rebuilt, which will be very difficult.
“It’s [Gaza] completely devastated,” Mamode says. “The hospitals are all in ruins.”
“In the north, there’s no functioning healthcare, so the whole thing needs to be revitalised.”
Besides hospitals needing to be rebuilt and equipment required, one major problem for Gaza is the need for medical staff and specialists, saying that they are the “hardest to find”.
“If you look at subspecialties, hospital subspecialties, they’ve been decimated because doctors have either been killed or detained or have left,” Mamode explains.
“If you trained somebody now, it would take 10 years to train somebody after medical school…You can build a hospital in a couple of years, but you can’t train a specialist in less than 10 years.”
