Highland hospital doctor with family in Gaza condemns deteriorating humanitarian situation and killings at food depots
The deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, including killings at food distribution sites, has been condemned by an Inverness doctor.
Dr Salim Ghayyda, a consultant paediatrician at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, said a distant relative and others were recently killed while seeking aid at a food depot amid the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war.
Dr Ghayyda, who was born and grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza, also voiced ongoing fears for family members, some of whom are health workers, as they endure horrific living conditions and continued attacks in their daily struggle for survival.
“It is horrific,” reflected Dr Ghayyda who said Gaza’s health care system - its buildings and its people - was being destroyed.
“It is almost a premeditated plan of the destruction of Gaza.”
Dr Ghayyda, a British Palestinian who is married with a son and two daughters, has worked for the NHS for more than 20 years after working as a young doctor at Gaza's main hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital as well as the Al-Nasser Children's Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis,.
His family, including his elderly parents, lived in the north of the Gaza strip but most fled south after Israel began its offensive following the October 7 2023 attack by Hamas gunmen who killed 1300 people and took about 250 others hostage.
Since then, more than 57,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed and much of the territory reduced to rubble while nearly half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are no longer functioning with the remaining facilities operating at vastly reduced capacity.
Driven by a sense of desperation, Dr Ghayyda launched an online funding campaign soon after the start of the Israeli offensive in a bid to get 31 members of his extended family to safety - with some success
But others remain including a brother, who is a radiographer, and his wife, a nurse, along with their three-year-old daughter, who are living in their badly damaged apartment in northern Gaza.
“They do go to work when they can so at least they can get some money but things have changed a lot,” said Dr Ghayyda who sends money to help support family members.
“Since the hospitals have been destroyed, there are makeshift hospitals.
“When they go to work, there is no access to transport.
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“They have to walk for a long time.
“It is worrying because health care workers are a target.”
During a ceasefire earlier this year, other family members returned to the north of the Gaza strip including another brother, an intensive care unit nurse, who had been working at Al-Shifa Hospital when it came under attack.
“There is no human life which is spared in Gaza,” Dr Ghayyda said.
“You can be hit and killed at any time.
“This is what makes it really hard for me.
“You wonder all morning and throughout the day whether your family are still alive.
“You cannot go to sleep.
“Every few hours, it hits home.”
Recently, a cousin’s son-in-law and other members of his family were killed while at one of the controversial depots run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) which began handing out food in late May.
Despite the risk of being killed or injured, another family member spent all day at a food depot but came away empty handed.
“He spent hours and hours walking and hours and hours waiting and ended up not getting any food,” Dr Ghayyda said.
Amid growing concerns, more than 130 NGOs have called for an immediate end to these distribution centres, which they claim have led to some of the deadliest and most violent incidents since the conflict began, and a return to the UN-led aid distribution plus a lifting of the Israeli blockade on aid and commercial supplies.
Dr Ghayyda described what was happening as “wicked”.
“Palestinians only go to these depots because they starving,” he said.
“Why are hundreds of thousands of people going there to risk their lives?
“Would you take the risk if your children are starving? Would go to the area where your enemy is?
“It’s dehumanising.
“Behind all this is human suffering.”
Family members tell him they can only eat once a day - including the young ones.
“Even when they find food, it is not nutritious,” he said.
“Even the strongest men have lost one-quarter, or one-third, of their body weight.
“It is because they are being starved.
“Food is very difficult to find and if you do find it and want to cook, there is no energy.
“You are having to burn plastic which becomes like petrol. Imagine the toxic fumes. It is desperate.”
The water supply is a tap at the end of the street.
“What the kids do all day is fill a bucket with water,” Dr Ghayyda.
“There is no school.
“There is no childhood
“What kind of childhood is it when you have nothing to eat and are being starved?
“All your life is about survival.
“I cannot imagine living their life.
“I wonder if it was me, what would I do for myself and my family?”