FOLLOWING the horrifying events of October 7, I was asked by Medical Aid for Palestinians UK to lead the first UK Emergency Medical Team (EMT) into Gaza to provide humanitarian aid.

We entered via Rafah on Christmas Day last year and worked at Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah in middle Gaza for two weeks. I struggle to find the words to describe the true horror of what I witnessed in Gaza. I spent most of my time operating on terrible explosive injuries involving the chest and the abdomen, but also some time in the emergency department.

Al Aqsa Hospital was operating at three to four times normal capacity, and together with relatives and other Gazans who had been displaced from the north and who had sought refuge in the hospital or grounds, there were nearly 10,000 people there, in a hospital designed for 150.

It is impossible to describe the overcrowding - every square foot of the hospital was covered by patients and their relatives, some in beds, most on the ground. I saw appalling injuries, particularly terrible deep burns and multiple traumatic amputations in children, the like of which I would never have expected to see in any healthcare setting.

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We had to operate with very........

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