Fear, pain, and a little hope: Volunteer doctors in Gaza

In the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s Khan Younis, a volunteer doctor breaks down as he speaks of the things he has seen during his mission here.

It is impossible to get over the scenes of starving, shocked, and injured children, thoracic surgeon Ehab Massad says.

“The sight of a child standing at the door, bewildered because they have lost their entire family in a bombing, I could never forget that, ever,” he adds in a faltering voice as tears fill his eyes.

‘It will never feel like enough’

Massad is a member of a medical mission by the Rahma Worldwide organisation, one of four doctors working in Qatar to have joined.

“I feel like no matter what we do for [the people of Gaza], it will never feel like enough,” he says.

“[However] the helpless feeling of being outside Gaza and watching the news is gone now; at least I feel like I’m doing my part.”

It’s a feeling echoed by the three other doctors to whom Al Jazeera spoke. Orthopaedic surgeon Anas Hijjawi described a long line of doctors who had signed up for medical missions to Gaza, some of whom had to wait up to five months for a spot on a mission to open up.

Dr Diyaa Rachdan, an ophthalmic surgeon, struggles to keep his voice steady as he tells Al Jazeera that Tuesday was the last day of the mission and the doctors would be heading back to their respective hospitals the next day.

“But I am hoping that there will be more, longer trips to Gaza in the future,” he adds.

Their work in Gaza is not easy, but that is not the reason these doctors are sad to be leaving their mission behind. On the contrary, every day is a struggle as they try to cope with a volume of deaths, illnesses and injuries they simply do not have the equipment to address.

Israel has often prevented the entry of hospital supplies into Gaza during the course of its nearly 19-month-long war on the besieged enclave. Medical missions are not allowed to bring anything in with them.

So, the doctors struggle on with the equipment they can find, sometimes reusing “disposable” medical implements over and over, despite the danger that poses, because there is simply no other choice, Dr Rachdan says.

At the back of their minds, several doctors tell Al Jazeera, is always the thought that people in Gaza die of wounds and illnesses that would be easily treated in any other hospital that has adequate supplies.

Dr Mohammad Almanaseer reassures a young patient about the burns covering her body and face [Screengrab/Al Jazeera Mubasher]

“Sometimes we can’t cover a patient or take precautions to preserve the sterility of an operating room,” Dr Hijjawi says.

“Sometimes I don’t have the right size metal plates or screws that I need to mend a limb. I’ve had to use the wrong size item … just to get them better enough that they could, some day, travel for more treatment.”

The things that happen to people in war

While doctors coming into Gaza have often followed developments there closely before arrival, nothing, they tell Al Jazeera, could have prepared them for the level of destruction the people of Gaza have to cope with.

“Words can’t describe the pain people are in here, or the level of exhaustion of the medical teams. They’ve been working nearly around the clock for a year and a half now, despite their own personal pain and tragedies,” says the fourth Qatar-based volunteer, urology consultant Mohammad Almanaseer.

There’s a tentativeness in Dr Almanaseer’s voice as he speaks of the case that has impacted him the most deeply, the story of a little boy of about two years old who was brought into the emergency room after Israel had bombed him and his family.

“The usual resuscitation attempts were made with him, but he needed immediate surgery. I was in the operating room, assisting the paediatric surgeon, but it became clear to us that the child probably wouldn’t survive.”

The child died the next morning.

“He was the same age as my son, and even had the same name. Kinan, little Kinan, may God receive you and your mother, who was killed in the same bombing, by his side.”

Injuries as extreme and urgent as Kinan’s are what the medical teams deal with day in and day out, resulting in a large swath of patients who need less urgent care and who keep getting pushed down the list.

Like the patients who have been waiting for months or years for cataract surgery, some of whom were helped by Dr Rachdan during this mission.

The people of Gaza have been forced to carry on throughout the genocidal war on their existence. This strength has inspired a sort of bewildered regard among the visiting volunteer doctors.

Dr Hijjawi tells of an afternoon chat with an operating room nurse who was explaining how he struggles to get to work every day and how he says a final farewell to his wife and children every day, because he never knows what may happen to any of them.

Wounded people, including children, are brought to Nasser Hospital following an Israeli attack on displaced Palestinians’ tents in Khan Younis, Gaza, on April 23, 2025 [Hani Alshaer/Anadolu Agency]

“Then, we heard ambulances coming in,” Dr Hijjawi continues, “and we went to muster in the emergency room. Suddenly, the OR nurse came running past us, desperately asking for an ambulance to go to his house with him because he had heard it had been bombed.

“It took some time … but they finally went out and came back with his parents, who had been killed, and the rest of his family, who had injuries among them. And, you know what? Just two days after this happened to him, he’s here, he’s upstairs working.”

The silence of the shocked

All four doctors seem to have a soft spot for their paediatric patients. It is the children’s pain that affects them the most, and it is their suffering that they will take away with them in their memories.

Al Jazeera follows Dr Almanaseer on his rounds as he visits a young girl in intensive care. She is recovering from severe burns on much of her face and body. In quiet tones, she asks him about whether she will be left with big scars from the burns.

The doctor answers her quietly and seriously, taking time to talk to her until it seems like she’s reassured for today.

Dr Hijjawi is also on his rounds, speaking to a little girl, gently examining her leg and asking her to “lift both feet off the bed for me”. Then he asks a little boy to wiggle his toes so he can check on how he’s healing.

Next is a young girl lying under a recovery blanket in a room on her own. Her right arm is bandaged, which is what he’s there to look at.

He squats on the floor near her bed and moves her arm, then each of her fingers. He’s concerned because she seems to have lost sensation in two fingers and feels the problem will have to be explored surgically, as he tells a concerned relative.

The children are quiet, wide-eyed, doing as they’re told and not saying much else.

“There’s so much they’re dealing with,’ Hijjawi says. “Being in the hospital is scary, but on top of that, so many of them are just lying there waiting, hoping, for someone to visit them – a parent or grandparent or sibling. Some of them don’t know who’s left alive from their family outside the hospital walls.

“Add all that to their physical pain, yes, they are very quiet for very long periods, or their minds seem to wander,” he says quietly.

Dr Rachdan is holding fast to one memory of Gaza’s children that he seems to want to preserve as he gets ready to leave: “One thing that I don’t think I will ever forget is the sight of the children in Gaza who continue playing, despite the destruction.

“They make paper aeroplanes, play ball, despite the tragedy they are surrounded by. I will always remember that.”