Israel: Scottish nurse shares ‘haunting’ experience of working in Gaza hospital, involving two-year-old girl

Mel Graham has just returned from a two-month deployment to a UK government-funded emergency field hospital based in Al Mawasi. She said she would be haunted by the memories of a dead two-year-old girl.

The 50-year-old, from Elderslie in Renfrewshire, said having been in Gaza last year, she did not think it could get any worse - but stressed “it has”.

Ms Graham - a Glasgow Royal Infirmary ICU nurse - said: “That first night the ceasefire shattered was easily the worst thing I have ever experienced. Even though we knew it was coming, it was still such a shock.

“The sound of explosions and fighting were so close to the hospital, so we knew we were going to be busy. At maybe two or three in the morning, the first casualties started coming in. It was a conveyor belt of carnage.

“My role involved triaging patients. Amongst that first load of patients brought in, there were was a two-year-old girl dead on arrival.

“There wasn’t a mark on her and I just remember standing there thinking ‘how can this happen?’ She looked completely perfect and was just covered in a thick layer of dust.

“It’s different when you are dealing with people with visible injuries. With some blast injuries, there are no obvious signs externally, but the shockwave had fatally affected her tiny wee lungs.

“The porters went to get a body bag for her, but the shortage of aid getting in meant there were only adult body bags available. She just disappeared into it.

“We took her to the temporary mortuary at the back of the hospital. We put two chairs out for the family to come in … but no-one ever came. I fear her parents had obviously been killed too.”

Ms Graham added: “The sight of that little girl will haunt me forever. It is the thing that I think about most. It’s at the forefront of my brain. It is not natural for a child to die like that.

“I didn’t want to leave her there alone, but I had to get back to help the many other casualties who had been rushed in.”

Two emergency field hospitals funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and run by Manchester-based frontline health charity UK-Med have treated more than 400,000 patients in Gaza so far. In total, the UK has announced £129 million last financial year, including £11.5m to support UK-Med's life-saving work in Gaza.

More than 50,000 people have now been killed and more than 90 per cent of the population displaced from their homes, many repeatedly. UK foreign secretary David Lammy has called for more aid to enter Gaza and urgently wants to see a return to the ceasefire.

Ms Graham spent exactly two months in Gaza after travelling out on February 1.

Discussing returning home, she said: “I find I struggle with the guilt of leaving. I struggled with the guilt of wanting to leave because the local people do not have that option. They are trapped. There’s no respite or them.”

Charity UK-Med has launched a Gaza Hospital Appeal and is calling for donations from the British public to support its work in the conflict zone.