A Manchester children’s nurse has lifted the lid on her life-saving work in war-torn Gaza as part of the UK Government’s humanitarian response to the crisis.
Children’s nurse Kathleen Shields, 31, was deployed to Gaza earlier this year with Manchester-based frontline medical charity UK-Med.
UK-Med is now running two FCDO-funded field hospitals – based in Al Mawasi and Deir El Balah – which have treated more than 100,000 patients in Gaza so far.
Caring Kathleen, 31, hopes to do another Gaza deployment, although admits her loved-ones back home worry.
She said: “People understandably worry because everyone’s seen the horrific news footage on the telly.
“When it all started to dominate the news, my partner Alfonso had joked with me, ‘Please don’t go there’. I think anyone in the same position would understandably be worried.
“I initially did not tell anyone I was having discussions with UK-Med about going out because there was no point stressing people unnecessarily until it was definite.
“It almost felt a bit selfish of me in a way. It can sound a bit odd when I say that to people because they think ‘How on earth are you selfish?’. But it felt selfish in the sense that something I wanted to do was going to be impacting people close to me.
“Once I had my dates, Alfonso was like ‘Obviously, I don’t really want you to go. I can’t lie about that. I know that it is really important, but I don’t want it to be you who has to do it’.
“However, he said that if I wanted to do it, I had his 100 per cent support. I’m so glad I had that support because it is something I’ve done that I can be proud of for the rest of my life.”
UK-Med volunteer Kathleen, who works in paediatrics in Manchester, spent three weeks in Gaza after going in on March 20 and also helped set up the UK Government funded emergency field hospital in Al Mawasi.
The UK continues to play a leadership role in trying to alleviate the suffering – calling for much more aid to enter Gaza.
On his first Middle East visit last month, new Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced a further £5.5million this year to UK-Med to fund their life-saving work in Gaza.
The UK has also lifted the pause on funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – releasing £21 million to supply emergency food, shelter and other support for three million people, as well as its wider work supporting six million Palestinian refugees across the region.
Development Minister Anneliese Dodds also announced a £6million package for UNICEF earlier this monthAUG7 to help tens of thousands of Gazans access food and water, as well as health, education and wellbeing services.
UK aid pays for medical volunteers such as Kathleen’s regular roles to be backfilled to ensure the NHS is not impacted.
Kathleen 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 beokay?’ 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’.
“You were constantly aware of explosions going off. It’s strange because within a couple of days of being there, hearing bombs going off and windows shaking became completely normal, to a certain extent. It was only when you heard a new warfare noise you hadn’t heard before that you’d get startled.
“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.”
A big chunk of Kathleen’s deployment was dedicated to getting the Al Mawasi medical facility up and running to receive patients suffering appalling injuries.
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.”
Kathleen added: “People often ask me, ‘How on earth can you work with children in places like that? It must be heartbreaking to see innocent children affected by war’.
“Although they don’t understand why these awful things are happening to them, they still smile and laugh and play. They still want to be children.
“When you have a small child in front of you and you can distract them and play with them and make them smile and laugh, it helps everyone hopefully forget about what’s going on for a few minutes.
“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.”
