I’m a surgeon, and I’ve been refused re-entry to Gaza – we need a medical ceasefire now | Ali Elaydi

Doctors sign the hippocratic oath to do no harm, but how can we treat people without hospitals, staff and enough medicines?

On 1 July 2024, the European hospital in Gaza evacuated all patients and staff. On that day I should have been shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues. I should have been tending gravely injured patients. I should have been helping them to flee. On ventilators, hooked up to IV fluids, on gurneys, in and out of consciousness and clinging to life, they had done nothing to deserve their situation, and they deserved my help.

Instead, I watched from my home in Texas and read messages from the other medics, as an overcrowded hospital transformed into a ghost town. With anguish, I witnessed the tragedy unfold from afar.

Dr Ali Elaydi is an orthopaedic surgeon. He is Palestinian-American and originally from Gaza

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