Nurse tells of treating war-injured patients during Gaza Strip deployment

A Scottish nurse who worked in the Gaza Strip has described treating patients with amputations and burns from the ongoing war there, as well as seeing children left “skeletal” from malnutrition.

Children’s nurse Kathleen Shields, from Kirkcaldy, went to Gaza earlier this year with the charity UK-Med.

The charity, funded by the Foreign Office, runs two hospitals in Al Mawasi and Deir El Balah which have treated thousands of patients since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

Ms Shields, 31, said she hopes to return for another Gaza deployment but her family often worry because of the “horrific” images on television.

She said: “When I first arrived, I was drafted in to supporting Palestinian medics operating the Wadi Gaza clinic, near the north of Gaza, which was really eye-opening because at that time the north had been the hardest hit with bombing.

“The clinic was situated at the top of a hill and it was impossible not to notice the devastation for miles around. You knew you were in a war zone and just thought, ‘Wow, this is real’.

“I’d never experienced anything like missiles flying overhead before.

“The first time I was scared asking ‘Are we going to be OK?’ and the more experienced staff reassured me, ‘Don’t worry, if we’re hearing it like this, it means it’s not going to hit us’.”

She added: “I felt in awe of the Palestinian staff and felt incredibly lucky to be working with people who were so committed to helping and caring for others no matter what difficulties they had to overcome.”

Ms Shields, who now works in paediatrics in Manchester, spent three weeks in the Gaza Strip, with much of her time spent setting up the field hospital in Al Mawasi.

She said: “Once we got the emergency department and wards set up, we started receiving patients transferred to us from other hospitals which were over-run.

“I am a children’s nurse, but you do whatever you can to help and initially a lot of our admitted patients were adults.

“It was eye-opening to suddenly be seeing people with war injuries.

“One of the first patients we received had had both of his legs amputated above his knee.

“There were burns victims, particularly children having accidents in tents where cooking is so much harder.

“One of the saddest things you came across was lots of babies and children suffering malnutrition and literally starving almost to death.

“Just tiny skeletal little things.”

The nurse added: “I remember one case quite vividly, a child with a burn injury to his arm who needed the dressing changed.

“We blew up some medical gloves like balloons and drew faces on them and his parents were so appreciative of the fact that for a short while their son was laughing and being a child again.”

During a visit to Gaza last month, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced a further £5.5 million for UK-Med to fund their work in Gaza.