London surgeon who travelled to Gaza to treat hospital patients says the ‘situation is dire’

A London-based surgeon who travelled to Gaza to volunteer in local hospitals has spoken of the horror he and his colleagues are facing as the number of dead and injured continues to mount.

Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with a practice in west London, says that they are now at the “death throes of the health system” in Gaza.

Speaking to CNN on Monday (October 23) from Al-Shifa hospital, the largest hospital in Gaza, he described the acute shortages local health staff are facing working in a war zone.

“We have 14,000 people wounded, it’s completely overwhelmed the health system,” Prof Abu-Sittah said. “We have over 150 patients on ventilators with critical injuries. The number of wounded from the Al-Ahli baptist hospital massacre have been brought to Al-Shifa hospital. We’ve run out of burns dressing and there are over 100 patients with burns covering over 40% of their bodies.

“The electricity is starting to cut out. The water pressure in the hospital is insufficient to run the sterilisation machine that we need for surgical instruments. Everything is running short. We’ve run out of external fixators.”

He continued: “Most importantly we’ve run out of space. The hospital that had a capacity between 550 and 700 beds, now has 1,700 patients.

“They’re sleeping on mattresses in the corridors, on the floors of the emergency department.  The situation is dire.

“We now have a term in Al Shifa hospital called ‘wounded child with no surviving family’.

“We’re just waiting for the electricity to run out and then the fuel and that will be the death throe of the health system. Without electricity this hospital will just be a mass grave.”

Prof Abu-Sittah has a wife and three sons at home in London. As soon as the news broke about the conflict his family knew he would be travelling to Gaza.

Speaking to the Daily Mail last week, he said: “As soon as I saw the news on Saturday (October 7), it was a no-brainer. I know the health service in Gaza, I’ve trained plastic surgeons here. And I know what’s available, the facilities and the capacity of the staff. I knew it would be just God-awful.”

He has vowed to stay until there is a ceasefire, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I can’t now turn my back on my patients. I can’t turn my back on my colleagues. I came here knowing that this is a war zone, and you have a moral duty as a doctor towards your patients, and caring for your patients who can’t evacuate and can’t get away.”

Prof Abu-Sittah is no stranger to working in dangerous conditions. The British-Palestinian surgeon has worked in hospitals in many war zones including Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.

His first trip to Gaza was as a medical student in the late 1980s. He returned in the early 2000s, and attended to the injured during the Israel-Gaza conflicts of 2008-09, 2012 and 2014.

Along with his humanitarian work overseas he has a practice near Harley Street in central London. He treats facial deformities and trauma injuries alongside “signature procedures” including facelifts, lip lifts, chin augmentations and “gummy smile” corrections.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7. Around 1,400 Israelis have been killed and more than 200 hostages were taken.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched retaliatory air strikes, health officials say. Around 40% of the fatalities have been children.