Eyewitness: Witnessing Israeli Genocide in Gaza
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
- Venue
- SOAS
- Room
- TBC
About this event
Please note that this event has been cancelled for reasons beyond our control, we apologise for the inconvenience.
Admired around the world for his courage and media appearances, in this talk Dr. Abu Sittah will discuss what he witnessed during his time in Gaza and in particular his work in the Shifa and Ahli hospitals.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah treated patients in previous war zones, but he describes the current onslaught on Gaza as qualitatively different than what he witnessed before. He left London soon after the start of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, but after over a month of providing medical treatment in Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals, with Israeli tank fire targeting Al Ahli hospital and with no more anaesthetics left to operate, the medical team had to leave the last fully functioning hospital in Gaza City.
About the speaker
Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a British-Palestinian Associate Professor of Surgery and a Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon. He completed his medical education at University of Glasgow in the U.K. and his postgraduate residency training in London. He later underwent three fellowships: Pediatric Craniofacial Surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Kids (GOS); Cleft Surgery at GOS and a further fellowship in Trauma Reconstruction at the Royal London Hospital.
In 2011 he was recruited by the American University of Beirut Medical Center. In 2012 he became Head of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the AUBMC, Clinical Lead of its Pediatric War injuries program and War Injuries Multidisciplinary Clinic.
In 2015 co-founded and became director of the Conflict Medicine Program at Global Health Institute at the American University of Beirut. He returned to the UK in 2020 and continues in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the private sector.
He is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Center for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College University of London and Visting Senior Lecturer at the Conflict & Health Research Group at Kings College London. He is Clinical Lead for the Operational Trauma Initiative at the World Health Organization’s EMRO Office and serves on the board of directors of INARA, a charity dedicated to providing reconstructive surgery to war injured children in the Middle East, and Board of Trustees of the UK based Medical Aid for Palestinians.
He serves on the UK’s National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) International Funding Committee. He has published extensively on the health consequences of prolonged conflict and on war injuries including a medical textbook, “Reconstructing the War Injured Patient” and “Treating the War Injured Child.”
He has worked as a war surgeon in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, South Lebanon and during the 4 wars in the Gaza Strip. His work was featured by numerous newspapers and media outlets notably La Monde, The Independent, Telegraph, BBC and CNN.
Chair
Registration
This event is only open to SOAS students and staff.
You will need to register with your SOAS email address. Please register by 4.00pm on 29 November.
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
(Photo credit: Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash)
