Surgeon disappointed by UK inaction on Gaza health crisis

A British surgeon fears the UK government will fail to act to help save health care in Gaza, after he had a meeting with Foreign Secretary David Cameron last week.

Nick Maynard, who also teaches at the University of Oxford, recently returned from the Palestinian enclave, where he and a team of British doctors were working at Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in central Gaza.

He met Lord Cameron and Development Minister Andrew Mitchell to give an account of his experiences.

These included operating in overcrowded rooms, sometimes without access to running water or blood supplies.

“I told them the stark details of what is going on,” Prof Maynard said during an online seminar hosted by the UK charity Balfour Project.

“The response was profoundly disappointing. I do not have any hope at all that it has made a difference.”

Only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functional and none are working at full capacity, the UN has said.

Medical centres in the enclave have been damaged by shelling, or lack the fuel and supplies to operate.

Although limited humanitarian aid has entered Gaza, the fighting prevents it from being safely delivered to hospitals.

“Aid is always welcome, but none of it can be distributed while there is military action,” Prof Maynard said.

“I don’t know if our government understands that.”

Although Prof Maynard has been going on training missions to Gaza for years, he was not prepared for what he encountered on his latest trip.

“When I went into Gaza on Christmas day, I really thought I was prepared for it. And I wasn’t,” he said.

As his team approached the Rafah border crossing from Egypt, they saw hundreds of aid lorries in a queue, waiting to cross.

A lorry full of nappies had been turned away, Prof Maynard said.

At one point, he said, Israeli bombs landed within metres of where his team were staying in Al Mawasi, a designated safe zone in southern Gaza.

The health system in Gaza will take years and “billions of dollars” to rebuild, Prof Maynard said.

He showed pictures, taken at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, of his team operating on a sixyear-old boy, while other seriously injured children were lying on the floor near by.

People in the enclave have lost hope, with many wanting to flee for good, he said.

“They all want to go now. They’ve been broken.”