Date
16/10/2013
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location
Sherrington Bldg, University of Liverpool Medical School
L69 3GE
Liverpool
Public meeting, all welcome
Liverpool links with Gaza
Abdul Hammad
Consultant Surgeon at Royal Liverpool Hospital,performed 1st kidney transplant in Gaza Jan 2013
Norma Turner
retired nurse, Manchestcr Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in Gaza with women ealthworkers 2013 and 2010.
Chairs: Colin McKean retired GP, chair Liverpool Friends of Palestine, and
Kitty Worthing medical student (3rd yr) cochair Liverpool University Friends of Palestine
Abdul Hammad, a Palestinian consultant surgeon at the Royal Liverpool hospital, led the team performing Gaza’s first ever kidney transplant in Jan 2013. With 250 patients on dialysis, Gaza needs 70 transplants a year. Hammad has done 5 transplants, and hopes to bring a surgeon, nurses and specialists to train at the Royal, to set up a transplant programme at Al Shifa
Hospital in Gaza City. Gaza is under siege by land, sea & air, an illegal collective punishment
of 1.75 million people crammed into 365 km2. “There is a power cut 8 hours a day. During one
of the transplants there was probably 10 secs without power. Imagine this as a daily life for
every patient.”
Israel’s military blockade and the renewed closure of the Egyptian border leaves Gaza with
poverty, food insecurity and disease, restricted supplies of medicines, fuel, power, building
materials… Gaza relies on international aid. But healthworkers are organising networks of
community support.