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 An expert in using minimal equipment to treat patients in basic
facilities, Nott returned three years after his previous visit
during the 2014 Gaza war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
This time, hospitals in Gaza are again struggling to cope with a
crisis: power cuts and medicine shortages stemming from tensions
between the enclave's ruling Hamas Islamist group and the rival West
Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
In a hall at a beachfront restaurant this week, Nott instructed 36
Palestinian surgeons in special techniques to deal with injuries in
a war zone.
"I was very impressed with the Gaza surgeons last time ... but of
course those experiences get less and less as time goes on and you
have to then retrain the new surgeons how to deal with those
injuries," he told Reuters.
"That is the reason why I am here ... to try and give the surgeons
who work in Gaza as much of my knowledge and experiences as I have
gained over the last 25 years."
Suhair Zakkout, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the
Red Cross in Gaza, which hosted Nott, said his visit would help
strengthen emergency medical services in the area and improve health
providers' efficiency.
Nott is a co-founder of the David Nott Foundation, which is
dedicated to furthering the principles and improving the standards
and practice of humanitarian surgery.
A specialist in vascular surgery, he worked in hospitals in Syria in
2012, 2013 and 2014 to treat victims of its civil war. He has also
practiced surgery in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq and other
conflict areas.
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"The surgeons I left in Aleppo and in Syria have my techniques," he
said. "So from my point of view, I left a legacy of training."
Nott, who leaves his job at three London hospitals when he goes our
to help the victims of war, described in graphic terms in The Mail
on Sunday newspaper in January the plight of the wounded children of
Aleppo.
"I spent the week before Christmas in a field hospital in Syria
operating on many tiny souls see-sawing between life and death,
their bodies held together with metal pins and scaffold-like
fixators," he wrote.
Commenting on the current energy and health care problems in Gaza,
he told Reuters: "That must have a huge knock on the face for
patient care, for patient safety and the civilian population in Gaza
and now they are beginning unfortunately to suffer.
"It seems a great shame to me that I come back and things do not
seem to have moved on to where we have liked to see them three years
ago," he said.
(Editing by Jeffrey Heller/Jeremy Gaunt)
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