IDC Chair responds to shocking evidence on Gaza healthcare

Today, the International Development Committee heard evidence on the current state of healthcare in Gaza.

The Committee heard evidence from Professor Nizam Mamode, a retired NHS transplant surgeon who recently returned from a period working at Nasser hospital in Gaza. Also giving evidence were representatives from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNWRA) and other aid groups.

The session came as the deadline approaches for Israel to ensure more aid enters Gaza or face potential cuts in military assistance from the United States.

Chair comment

Responding to evidence from Professor Mamode, Committee Chair Sarah Champion said:

“The examples Professor Mamode gave us today were profound and deeply chilling. On this evidence, the UK needs to take seriously the prospect of international humanitarian law having been egregiously broken in Gaza.

“The supposedly safe area in which he worked was neither a ‘safe’ nor a ‘humanitarian’ zone, he said, with more than one million people crammed into an increasingly small area. He recalled operating on patients without access at times to basic medical supplies like swabs or sterile gloves.

“Professor Mamode told us that he has worked in a number of dangerous conflict zones, including the Rwandan genocide. Yet still he had never seen anything on the scale of what he saw in Gaza. This view was no outlier; it was also that of his experienced colleagues, one of whom had travelled to Ukraine several times. 

“He saw children with sniper injuries to the head, children shot by drones – evidence, he said, of targeting by the Israeli military. He told the Committee he was aware of five armoured UN convoys, used to travel into and out of Gaza, shot at by Israeli forces.

“But the conflict’s devastating direct impact on the population is just the tip of the iceberg. Professor Mamode informed us that many of the ancillary services that existed before the war – very good hospitals, staffed by very good medics – have been destroyed.

“The Committee will do all we can to act on Professor Mamode’s extraordinary testimony and ensure his experiences are heard loud and clear. If leaders are not yet listening, they should be by now.”

Further information

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Image: House of Commons/Laurie Noble