| | | | | | | | | |
Dear John, What I witnessed in Gaza will stay with me for the rest of my life. As medical activity manager, I saw a healthcare system which had been brought to its knees: crippled by relentless airstrikes, starved of supplies via the weaponisation of aid, and stripped of its staff through executions and kidnappings. I cared for malnourished children with missing limbs, whose bodies were riddled with wounds that refused to heal for lack of food. At night, their cries echoed through our field hospital as they woke alone; their parents having been critically injured or killed. And yet, amidst this devastation, I also witnessed profound courage. For nearly two years, my Palestinian colleagues have shown up every day, travelling from across Gaza at great risk to themselves. They come to work having lost family members and loved ones, journeying from the ruins of their homes, from tents, sometimes on foot or by donkey, just to care for the injured and dying. Working beside them has been the greatest honour of my life. When I think of courage, I think of the countless children I treated who fought for life despite being maimed, orphaned, and starved. I think of the 10-year-old girl whose limbs were shattered and organs perforated from the pressure of the airstrike that killed her mother and brother. She was so malnourished that her wounds refused to heal—but she fought, despite the infection invading her bones, crying for a mother who would never come. I think of the bruised and mottled four-month-old, leg encased in plaster before he could even learn to crawl; a survivor of an airstrike that also left him orphaned, with no one to carry him home. I could tell so many of these stories, each with different voices and names, but marked by the same injustice. | | | | | | | | This is not war. This is a massacre. If we allow this to continue without tangible action, what kind of precedent are we setting for future generations? We must pressure our government to suspend arms exports, insist on unimpeded humanitarian aid, and call for accountability for those targeting hospitals, ambulances, and humanitarian staff. More than 1,200 MSF staff, most of them Palestinian, continue to work across Gaza and the West Bank as the genocide continues. Thanks to MSF's dedicated supporters around the world, they've provided more than a million outpatient consultations, cared for hundreds of thousands of patients in trauma and emergency settings, and delivered healthcare in some of the direst settings – despite critical supply shortages. These healthcare workers risk their lives just reporting for duty, and still they continue. Gaza needs a permanent ceasefire now. The courage of Gaza's health workers demands more than our silence – it demands our action. With gratitude and in solidarity,  | Dr Thienminh Dinh
Australian specialist emergency physician
Former medical activity manager, Gaza | P.S. Your support helps us remain independent, neutral, and impartial in our response to crises around the world. You can help our teams continue to provide essential healthcare by donating to our Emergency Fund today. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Médecins Sans Frontières New Zealand Charitable Trust. Charity Number 53189.
Médecins Sans Frontières, PO Box 6241, Victoria Street West, Auckland 1142, New Zealand.
You can contact us by emailing Supporter Relations or calling 0508 633 324. | | | | | | Médecins Sans Frontières New Zealand engages Vision6, a third-party Australian-based service, to transmit our monthly
E-Newsletter, fundraising emails, and invitations to MSF events. Vision6 collect personal information about your use of our supporter communications, for example, click-through rate and unsubscribe rate in order to compile and report statistics back to us. Vision6 uses collected personal information for the sole purpose of preparing reports to help us improve the efficacy of our supporter communications. MSF takes measures to ensure the privacy of the information included in these reports. Our privacy policy is available at www.msf.org.nz/privacy and contains information on how you can access or correct your personal information, who we disclose your personal information to and how you can lodge a complaint. | | | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.