Medic working for Manchester charity in Gaza calls for end to the conflict
Dr Matt Newport has told how he gave his two-year-old daughter extra big hugs after returning from treating kids with appalling injuries in Gaza
A medic has told how he gives his two-year-old daughter extra big hugs after returning from treating kids with appalling injuries in Gaza.
Dr Matt Newport has lifted the lid on his life-saving work with Manchester-based frontline medical charity UK-Med as part of the UK Government’s humanitarian response to the Israel/Gaza crisis.
Anaesthetist Matt, 37, from Ramsbottom, Lancashire, has just returned from a month-long deployment to help civilians caught up in the conflict – his third life-saving visit to war-torn Gaza this year.
Dad-of-one Matt said: “It’s the huge number of wounded children and women that has left a real impact on me - right down to babies just a day or two old and weighing just a couple of kilograms.
“An air strike in Khan Younis on July 7 brought 30 trauma patients to our emergency department over the course of two hours.
“When the dust settled, we had seven bodies in our mortuary, including a very young boy who had been shot through the heart and was dead on arrival. The child’s father was brought in with him, near-death, after a bullet to the head.
“Shamefully, I avoided eye contact with the mother of the family, not knowing if I could hold it together while thinking of my own wife and two-year-old daughter back in the UK.”
He added: “As a first-time father of a two-year-old, seeing displaced, frightened, parentless, and traumatically injured children has been quite challenging.
“One young boy who will remain with me had injuries to his whole body that you simply don’t see in the UK. He was perhaps eight years old.
“In parallel his abdomen was opened, and his injured bowel repaired, whilst his right leg was amputated at the hip along with his left arm at the elbow.
“Despite our best efforts, the impact of his injuries took its toll on his young and entirely innocent body, and he died in theatre. We stood around him – me and one of the local health staff – in a moment of quiet reflection. Then they wrapped him in white cloth and took him out to his family.
“I’m not a particularly emotional individual but what I’ve seen has made me hug my daughter Meredith that little bit tighter when I see her.
“When I returned just in time for her second birthday in March, I had to opt not to pick her up from nursery because I couldn’t trust myself not to get upset in front of the nursery staff.
“It has been really hard being away, but at the same time, I want to be a role model and instil in Meredith that helping others is important.”
The UK continues to play a leadership role in trying to alleviate the suffering – calling for much more aid to enter Gaza.
On his first Middle East visit last month, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced a further £5.5million this year to UK-Med to fund their life-saving work in Gaza.
The UK has also lifted the pause on funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - releasing £21 million to supply emergency food, shelter and other support for three million people, as well as its wider work supporting six million Palestinian refugees across the region.
Development Minister Anneliese Dodds also last weekAUG7 announced a £6million package for UNICEF to help tens of thousands of Gazans access food and water, as well as health, education and wellbeing services.
Matt has supported staff at Al Aqsa hospital and played a key role establishing and developing the UK-Med emergency field hospital at Al Mawasi.
UK aid pays for medical volunteers such as Matt’s regular roles to be backfilled to ensure the NHS is not impacted.
Matt – who works for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust at the Blackburn and Burnley Teaching Hospitals, as well as the North West Air Ambulance - said: “The vicious fighting in Rafah is within sight of our field hospital, which means a lot of explosions and gunfire and a steady stream of trauma patients.
“On one of the first nights of my most recent deployment, there was a mass casualty incident with around 35 patients brought in. Four died of their wounds, but I’m trying to focus on those we managed to save.
“It resembled a horrid conveyor belt, though each patient had their own story. Cases ranged from adults and children with gunshot wounds, traumatic amputations, and other horrendous injuries.
“I think it sometimes gets lost amongst all the violence that there are so many people with existing serious medical conditions urgently needing treatment like cancers, diabetes, heart disease or kidney problems needing dialysis. All of this has ground to a halt.
“One really challenging case we dealt with was a baby with life-threatening burns who had fallen into a vat of boiling water the family were using for cooking because they were living in a tent after being displaced from their house because of the conflict.
“As the UK-Med team’s anaesthetist, this variety kept me on my toes and the experience of working with such a variety of injuries in a high-stress situation makes me feel ready for anything the NHS has to throw at me. It’s made me a better doctor.
“We’ve been treating traumatic injuries unlike anything I am used to seeing in the UK where you deal with serious road accidents, stabbings and the occasional shooting, though not of the severity of what I’ve experienced in Gaza.”
He added: “Returning to the NHS, I have any bit of equipment and medication I need at the drop of a hat and it makes me really sad that the excellent Palestinian medics I worked with often don’t have the most basic resources through no fault of their own.”
Matt – who returned from Gaza on July 28 after his third deployment - says his focus on helping people helped him deal with the constant danger.
He said: “A lot had changed for my third deployment. We’d been forced to abandon the guest house we’d previously stayed in, as it was now outside the ‘humanitarian zone’ so were sleeping in tents in the hospital grounds.
“The vicious fighting in Rafah was within sight of our hospital. The sound of gunfire and explosions in neighbouring areas was our morning alarm clock and would continue throughout the day and night. It just became background noise. The devastation looked apocalyptic.
“You get used to waking up in the night to some really big bangs and the blast waves rattling the barbed wire around our compound, often followed by the wail of ambulance sirens. It became such a common occurrence you’d just go back to sleep.
He added: “The local hospital staff have it much, much worse than us. I know I will be returning home to safety.
“They were coming down to the hospital each morning, often via donkey and cart from the tented displacement camps, and you can see the stress and fear in their eyes. I can’t imagine how they are finding the courage to come to work on the wards, let alone treat and care for upwards of 500 patients a day.”
UK-Med is now running two FCDO-funded field hospitals – based in Al Mawasi and Deir El Balah – which have treated more than 100,000 patients in Gaza so far.
Matt said: “The unfortunate consequence of any conflict is that innocent civilians get caught up in it through absolutely no fault of their own.
“Hopefully one day my daughter Meredith will be proud that her daddy stood in solidarity with human beings who are suffering to show them they are not alone and that people care.”