Images of injured children in Gaza will never leave me

As a surgeon in Gaza, Nizam Mamode witnessed hell visited on Palestine’s youth. After the ceasefire, it is time to hold the people who are responsible to account

An injured Palestinian boy stands next to the rubble of a family house that was hit overnight in Israeli bombardment in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah in southern Gaza on May 20, 2024. Picture AFP via Getty Images

I had never imagined, when working as a professor of transplant surgery at a large teaching hospital in London, that one day I would find myself operating on an eight-year-old child who was bleeding to death, only to be told by the scrub nurse there were no more gauze swabs available. 

But I found myself in that situation last August while operating at Nasser hospital in Gaza as a volunteer with Medical Aid for Palestinians (Map). Reduced to scooping out the blood with my hands, I felt an overwhelming wave of nausea — I was anxious the child would not survive. Luckily she did, although many others did not.