‘They had not seen an apple for seven months’

As the anniversary of the October 7 attacks approached, the Irish Examiner’s political editor, Elaine Loughlin, spoke to three medics and the head of the not-for-profit FAJR Scientific. The paper says all four risked their own lives to save people in Gaza. Its September 21, 2024 feature gives their accounts in their own words. The headline comes from Dr. Mohammed Tahir’s story of bringing apples to the staff of a hospital in northern Gaza, who “had not seen an apple for seven months at that point.”

FAJR’s part in this

The four doctors are Dr. Jeremy Hickey, an anesthetist from Perth, Australia; Dr. Tahir, an orthopedic and peripheral nerve surgeon from London; Dr. Khaled Saleh, an orthopedic surgeon with more than 30 years’ experience; and Dr. Mosab Nasser, whom the Examiner calls co-founder of FAJR Scientific. The paper credits the photos of all four to FAJR Scientific.

“It’s overwhelming, but you’ve got no choice but to get on with it,” he said. Dr. Tahir has been to Gaza twice since October 7 and did 290 surgeries in 59 days on the second trip alone. “It’s non-stop, it’s constant, it’s draining,” he said, “mainly emotionally and spiritually.”

Dr. Saleh described walking into “a situation where you have no supplies, people are dying, and at the same time, there’s this need as a physician to make things right, to help, to change the current situation.” He said that without equipment and antibiotics, minor infections can quickly turn into amputations. Dr. Nasser said that when he was there in August, two months before the war, Gaza already needed hundreds of thousands of surgeries of all kinds.

The Irish Examiner refers to the organization as FAJR Scientific. Read the full story on the Irish Examiner.