‘The single worst thing I’ve seen’: Top Oxford surgeon recounts horrors of Gaza hospital

Prof Nick Maynard said that the “huge numbers” of wounded children would “never, ever leave [him].” – Prof Nick Maynard/MAP

Professor Nick Maynard has seen many horrors during his time as a surgeon but what he witnessed in central Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital will haunt him for the rest of his life, he says.

“It was the single worst thing I’ve seen in my 35-year medical career,” he told the Telegraph on Wednesday shortly after arriving home in Oxford.

Amid the chaos consuming the emergency department on New Year’s Day, the British consultant spotted a six-year-old boy wrapped in a blanket, lying alone and semi-conscious on the ground.

“He had no family with him and he hadn’t been seen by any nurses or doctors,” he said.

The child had a head injury, his body was covered with “appalling burns,” and his chest was torn open by a shrapnel wound. “You could see air being sucked in and then bubbling out again,” he said.

Prof Maynard scooped the boy up and rushed him into a corner. There were no beds, so he and a colleague laid him on the ground, working on hands and knees to try and resuscitate him.

“We were putting drips into him to drain the bleeding in his chest, we tried to cover his burns because he was shivering. It was awful. The tragedy is, I don’t know whether he survived”.

Prof Maynard, 61, is a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospital and has been visiting Gaza to teach surgery since 2010.

But this was the first time he had entered the enclave during wartime. Speaking from Cairo and then Oxford, he said there was nothing that could have prepared him for his latest visit.

As an experienced surgeon, Prof Maynard Maynard mainly dealt with severe blast injuries to the abdomen and chest on his most recent trip to Gaza. – Prof Nick Maynard /MAP

“It was much worse than we could possibly have imagined. I couldn’t compare it to anything, it was just like nothing I’ve seen on Earth,” he said.

His trip, organised through UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), was unexpectedly cut short on Sunday when he and his colleagues were told to evacuate the hospital by the IDF.

Strikes in the vicinity of the Al-Aqsa Hospital meant the vast majority of its medical staff, along with 600 patients, were forced to leave.

Prof Maynard’s last day working in the hospital was last Friday, when there was a reported missile attack that damaged the hospital’s intensive care unit. He was in surgery when the strike happened. There was  “a big hole in the wall of the ICU,” he said.

He said there were rumours of IDF snipers in the nearby Deir al Balah neighbourhood shooting people and directing fire at the hospital.

“I didn’t see that, but I certainly saw the gunshot wounds on patients,” he said.

He and his team also heard quadcopters – remote-controlled drones – “incessantly” circling the hospital ground and making “the most appalling, very loud buzzing noise”. There have been allegations from others that the drones are armed with sniper rifles.

Prof Maynard is a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospital and has been visiting Gaza to teach surgery since 2010. – Prof Nick Maynard/MAP

Nearly all hospitals in Gaza have been forced to close because of the fighting. Al-Shifa, the Strip’s largest hospital, which Israel says sits above a Hamas command and control centre, closed in November.

Maynard has worked in Al-Shifa many times over the years and says, “unequivocally”, that he saw no evidence of the hospital being used by Hamas.

“I know many doctors who’ve been there for many years, who I would trust implicitly, who are quite clear that there’s never been any evidence of military activity,” he said.

“There can be certainly no doubt in my mind from what I’ve recently witnessed that [Israel] are directly targeting healthcare structures with a view to completely disabling the healthcare system in Gaza.”

Prof Maynard said the extreme crowing of hospitals in Gaza was not evident from the images and videos that were being released.

The Al-Aqsa hospital has capacity for roughly 150 patients but there were nearly 700 in need of treatment when Maynard left, he said. Hundreds more were taking refuge in the hospital grounds.

“There’s a whole new sort of town built up, with makeshift tents and shelters. It was just huge, completely impoverished people living there in the most appalling situations,” he said. “No running water. No sanitation systems at all. Just appalling.

Prof Nick Maynard with a colleague in Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza – Prof Nick Maynard /MAP

He said there were days there was no running water in the operating theatres, so they could only scrub up using alcohol gel.

“The doctors and nurses were wonderful there, but they just simply couldn’t maintain a sterile environment,” he said.

“Sanitation was horrendous. Just appalling infections. There were flies in the operating theatre, flies resting on the open abdomen when we were operating.”

There were several hundred new patients coming into the emergency department every day. The sheer number of admissions was causing “a breakdown of the triage system,” Maynard said.

When there are large aerial bombardments in the area, many of the casualties are brought to the hospital by family members, as it is becoming increasingly difficult for ambulances to locate and reach the strike areas, he explained.

Some casualties are dragged helplessly on donkey carts to the hospital and others are carried for up to 2 kilometres by relatives.

“The reality is that many people haven’t been discovered yet, and when they are discovered, they’re dead,” he said.

His trip to Al-Aqsa, organised through UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), was unexpectedly cut short when he and his colleagues were told to evacuate the hospital by the IDF. – Prof Nick Maynard/MAP

As an experienced surgeon, Maynard mainly dealt with severe blast injuries to the abdomen and chest, which caused “horrific” wounds, as the “very small and extremely hot” pieces of shrapnel passed through the bodily tissues with ease.

“When you open up the abdomen of the chest and then you just see the havoc these small fragments have caused – they rip through all the different internal organs,” he said.

But it was the “huge numbers” of wounded children that he said would  “never, ever leave me.”

He saw many malnutrition cases amongst the surgical patients in Al-Aqsa and paediatrician colleagues told him they were seeing around two cases of Kwashiorkor a week.

Kwashiorkor typically affects children in famine hit areas, where a lack of protein causes fluid retention and their bellies to swell.

“I remember one child vividly. He was about eight or nine, and kept coming up to us asking for food because his whole family had been killed and he hadn’t eaten for three days. It was deeply distressing,” Prof Maynard said.

Four out of five of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza, according to the World Food Programme, which recently warned that the spectre of famine now looms in the territory, where more than half a million people are facing “catastrophic” levels of hunger.

Prof Maynard said that he fell in love with the people of Gaza. – Prof Nick Maynard/MAP

When The Telegraph spoke again with Prof Maynard on Wednesday, from his home in Oxford, he said he was having trouble sleeping.

“We were all affected very emotionally by what we saw and really struggled leaving. I didn’t sleep much the last couple of nights, we have these very mixed emotions about having left,” he said.

“Part of that is guilt. Guilt that we had to leave Gaza, our friends and colleagues, and  knowing that we may not see them again.”

However, Maynard is already planning his next trip the Al-Aqsa hospital where he hopes to stay as a resident with his team – rather than travelling back and forth to a safehouse

“The people are unique in my view, I love them dearly, they are just indescribably wonderful,” he says. “I fell in love with the place…it’s just become such a huge part of me, that I have to go back and help them.”

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