Interviewer: Pediatrician, from med-Global, to tell us more about what’s going on inside with these cases. Dr. Ahmad, thank you so much for joining us. Let me start off by asking, just give us a picture, a set, an assessment of what are the situations inside the hospital.
Dr Ahmad: So, currently, the healthcare system is completely overwhelmed because of what appears to be a complete targeting of all the healthcare infrastructure in this small strip of land with 2.5 million people. And the few hospitals left functioning are in a state of chaos, right? Every few hours we are bombarded with ambulances bringing in people in pieces and, you know, women with their abdomens eviscerated, little children with shrapnel injuries, men dead on arrival. We have an environment where, along with this, the chaos of emotional families who have just pulled their families from the rubble, coming in emotionally distraught, traumatized emotionally and psychologically with what they just experienced. And then, beyond this, you have medical staff who are part of this community, who the first question they ask is, where was the bombing? Is this my family member? Which neighborhood? It’s the first question you hear. And often, because of how small the community feels, they’re treating their family. And everybody here is family. So, beyond the physical impact and the physical trauma we’re seeing, [there’s] a component of emotional stress that I can’t, couldn’t have imagined.
Interviewer: Dr. Ahmad, let’s talk more specific about cases that you have been dealing with since your arrival to the hospital, to volunteer inside, this remaining health facilities. Like, walk us through some of the cases that are experiencing traumatizing conditions, particularly among children and women?
Dr Ahmad: This is especially poignant and hard to speak about, you know, given what happened yesterday. There was a bombing of one of the schools and we had child after child after child, get brought into the resuscitation room with different extents of traumatic injury. Standing over one child, intubated with a different skull fracture, another with a shaft of injury, probably 10 years old, so severe that we could see an exposed kidney and likely a transected spinal cord trying to rush them to the OR to salvage what we could. And then in the backdrop, as a pediatrician, I see small children sitting in the corner with lesser physical traumatic injuries, but no doubt witnessing death and destruction and dying in a way that their little brains could never be capable of coping with. So we spoke about this briefly, but the psychological impact, beyond the physical impact, will be generational. And so if I go into the psychiatric understanding of epigenetics, when we talk about exposing small children with plastic brains, meaning the ability to morph and change to this level of stress, physiological stress, from adrenaline and stress hormone, you know, we sit here and we hear the hums above us of drones, which can often mean another attack is coming, and the children, they are completely aware of this. And they look up in fear and they are startled by any loud noise, the effect on the unraveling of DNA and the epigenetic research shows us and tells us that this is often permanently opened and that the impact can even be carried generationally in their children. The trauma doesn’t just happen in the three or four year olds now, it happens in their children and their children after them. And so this would take decades of therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to unravel them and wrap in and the worst part is we’re still in it. So there’s no opportunity to deal with psychological, psychiatric trauma when we’re still dealing with the physical trauma, the lack of surviving today, finding clean water, finding enough medication to survive today. So thinking about the long-term effects seems silly except that you watch these kids’ eyes and that’s all I can think about is even the ones who survive will experience trauma forever.
Interviewer: Dr. Ahmad, I know this is your first time visiting Gaza and being in one of its health facilities but I know this is not your first time being part of medical missions worldwide. Can you draw on your personal experience? What’s the difference if we set for a comparing/contrast matter here? What is the difference here?
Dr Ahmad: I have had the opportunity to work with Med Global and other organizations and treating other refugee groups in medical missions around the world and I will say there is nothing like this. I’ve been in fields in Greece taking care of Syrian refugees and there were hanging refugees in Bangladesh where it was, those were extremely difficult situations. The difference between those things and this is that this is a killing box. There’s no way to escape and the ongoing trauma daily, every hour, is unimaginable. We sat as physicians and family members and people home, back home, in the States where I’m from, and we watched things on TV and saw some news clips from news agencies like yours or social media and we cried and we were worried, and that’s what was the impetus for me to come and when I landed here, from the moment I landed and I saw a level of devastation I could have never ever have imagined it based on what I had seen. The videos and these interviews never do it justice. The blood on my hands and the eyes I have closed for the final time of patients on the floor because they don’t have stretchers and medication, the screams of horror from mothers who lost their children. It will, you know, it will be with me forever.
Interviewer: What’s urgently needed inside the hospital now? Just to, I know it’s too much going on inside the hospital with the lack of medical supplies, exhaustion of medical staff as well, but to save life, what’s needed right now?
Dr Ahmad: The bleeding has to stop, the bombs have to stop and access to all types of humanitarian have to be allowed. You know, If there’s any doubt from anybody whether or not humanitarian aid has been allowed I can promise you the answer is no. I was restricted. I had multiple suitcases of many wonderful people in America who knew that something was going on and tried to donate and help with medical supplies and I wasn’t allowed to bring anything except a suitcase. The hospital is empty of the supplies you need to take care of the death and dying. If I can say one last thing that I think is important to understand in terms of the greater scope of what’s happening. When we heard the numbers of how many had died 16,000 children and 35, 45, 45,000 other people civilians being killed in this and the number is underestimated. The reason I say this is, as a medical professional, this ICU where I work today is full of DKA patients, diabetic patients who get a very treatable disease but they are dying of the most simple thing, because the insulin is unavailable, because they are not allowed to bring it in and refrigeration is gone. There are people dying of chronic… as many amputees as they are from the trauma, there’s amputees of diabetes uncontrolled and these people will be permanently disabled after this war. The numbers are vastly, I would say, four or five, six times higher easily. Let alone the ones who will die in the decades coming from both the psychiatric trauma and the physical disabilities associated with what’s happened in the last nine months. What they need in the hospital is, what they need in the hospital is the bombing to stop and some level of stability and flow of humanitarian aid and medical supplies.
Interviewer: Dr. Ahmad, thank you so much for your insight. Thank you.