‘People used their phone lights so we could operate on the patient’s abdomen’: Aussie surgeon on life and death in Gaza
Melbourne surgeon Dr Bushra Othman was operating with limited electricity, water and sterile supplies in the summer heat.
Operating by phone torchlight as flies landed on open wounds, Melbourne surgeon Dr Bushra Othman describes conditions at a Gaza hospital as close to “unimaginable”.
She has just returned to Australia after a three-week medical mission to the region, where she tended to women and children with burns, blast wounds and trauma.
But among the shocks for her while working at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah were the injuries to the men.
“One thing that I saw a lot of was the number of young men shot in their groin areas and their legs so they would be paralysed — it was just devastating.”
