A French surgeon closer to the Gazaouis. François Jourdel, a French resident in Nouméa in Nueva Caledonia, returns from a mission with the doctors of NGOs without borders in the Palestinian enclave besieged by the Israeli army. In the columns of Parisian, this specialist in plastic surgery represents the horror experienced by civilians and the difficult daily life of nursing staff in the band’s hospitals.
“The Country Hospital is executed 24 hours a day, with four other Palestinian surgeons. We operated fifteen patients a day working with the minimum. I started around 7 am at 7:30 am, I was nibbling something in the morning, then it was operating until 7 pm after 12 hours without eating, we are cooked,” says François Jourdel.
“Abominable injuries in children”
Used to voluntarily work on war or disaster theaters, the surgeon says that it is “impressed” by “the amount of injuries and seeing so many abominable injuries in children.” “The wounded, explosive ball, serious burns … we usually see them in soldiers. Not in children.”
Faced with the seriousness of the injuries, amputation is sometimes the only decision to make. “I had to take it from an 18 -year -old boy, using a translator. I saw his eyes humidify, he took his hands and began not to amputate him,” he says.
The doctor also faces the famine that hits the enclave due to the restrictions imposed by the Israeli army on humanitarian aid. “I have photos before/after my staff: everyone lost at least 20 kg. Many patients are rickety. However, wound healing is correlated with nutritional status,” François Jourdel said. “I had brought about twenty lyophilized dishes, but very quickly I was ashamed to eat, so I gave them.”
“With my patients, I did not have long discussions but signs of the hand,” I love you “… These are people like you and I, who want to smile, start a family,” he continues.
Images “that we do not show in the West”
The doctor, who operated mainly in the city of Deir Al-Balah, escaped by little of the double strike of the Israeli army at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, where he carried out some interventions.
“I had to be there that day, but the day before, two or three technical interventions scheduled for the country’s hospital, so I changed my visit the next day,” he explains.
“In the video surveillance of the hospital, I saw the type of images that we did not show in the West: scattered body pieces around the hospital, people who brought an arm, a leg, to bury all the victims. I saw a baby trunk, the body and the boss. At first I had the impression that it was a stone statue,” he describes.
François Jourdel had already gone to Gaza in November 2023. Two years later, the enclave is unrecognizable. “The entire areas are reduced to nothing, especially along the border. We can no longer distinguish anything, everything is flattened, there is no more vegetation.”
Source: BFM TV
