Bowness surgeon saves lives in Gaza

Richard Villar, from Bowness, is a distinguished orthopaedic surgeon with extensive experience as a war surgeon. Having served as the Medical Officer to the SAS and has been active in over 30 conflict zone including Somalia, Lebanon and Ethiopia.

The 71-year-old has been to Gaza three times with his first time being in 2018 during the Gaza border protests, also known as the Great March of Return.

He was contacted by the Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) to help this year after the attacks began on October 7 2023.

After travelling from Cairo in Egypt to do basic training across the Sinai Peninsula, Mr Villar entered Gaza just after seven volunteers from World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli air strike.

"That was late March and that was exactly the time we were going in," he said.

"Humanitarian workers were definitely being targeted. The MAP operation in Gaza had already been attacked by missiles on one occasion before we got there.

"The surviving rate of the humanitarian workers was not good."

Despite all this, Mr Villar found himself working at al-Aqsa Hospital in the city of Deir Al Balah - a 200-bed hospital overrun with 700 patients, including many women and children. 

No one in this photograph was being paid for their work on the ward (Image: Submitted)

Richard and five other fellow volunteer doctors joined the surgical team.

"There were beds but most patients were on the floor because we simply did not have enough beds for that number of patients," he said.

"Around the hospital, there were another 3,000 individuals in their tents because the displaced persons felt the hospital was a safer place to be.

"At that stage, I think Gaza had something like 36 hospitals but only four or five were functioning at a very basic level because no aid was really coming in."

Richard inspecting a patient's leg (Image: Submitted)

The hospital was under constant threat from drones, missiles, naval shells, and machine gun fire. Despite these dangers and facing dire conditions, he and fellow medics performed complex surgeries on victims of bombings.

Medicines were limited, equipment minimal, and basic necessities such as clean water and sufficient food were luxuries.

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"It is very difficult as a doctor because yes you see a casualty or multiple casualties coming in but you are also thinking 'Why is it I am treating a whole lot of children or women?'

"They are very few gunshot wounds, mostly they are explosive injuries and it is by definition a multiple injury. Each of those injuries needs to be treated and each of those injuries is unlikely to be treated in one operation.

"They would need multiple operations and even then they are lucky if it gets a perfect result."

Hospital reception had become a ward (Image: Submitted)

He added he believed that over a million operations were needed for people in Gaza.

At his hospital, maternity suits were converted into operation theatres due to the workload.

"A delivery suit is slightly bigger than a consulting room that you would be used to. We are looking at about 60 or 70 cases a day,” he said.

"Mass casualties happen every day in Gaza. If you are talking about mass casualties in the UK or anywhere else you are looking at exceptional circumstances. In Gaza you will get 40 or 50 cases coming through the door - it is huge."

Patients were 'very grateful' that Mr Villar was treating them.

"I remember one patient saying to me 'I am very lucky that you are here when I am here',” he said.

"Patients would bring their whole families in - it was quite common. 

"If there was ever any doubt in your mind whether you were doing the right thing you just look them in their eyes - you know you are doing the right thing. You feel it, they feel it.

"You do the best you can, you cannot do everything. I can do something to support people who are definitely in trouble."

Typical result of a missile - multiply injured children (Image: Submitted)

When asked what motivates Mr Villar to keep saving people on war frontlines, he said: "I have never volunteered for anything, they always come to me. If you would have asked me at the beginning of my career whether I would be specializing in what I am doing now I would have not predicted this.

"I suppose I had a father who was in the Second World War. I had a grandfather who was a submarine officer in the First World War so I suppose it is in the blood. 

"It was a world which I understood. My wife is ex-army and her father was also, so you can see the world I inhabit. 

"Yes these are dangerous places to be but if you genuinely felt you were not going to make it home then you would not go in the first place."

Destroyed building (Image: Submitted)

Mr Villar decided he wanted to write about his experience in Gaza and advocate for the troubles.

He commuted twice a day from Rafah to Deir Al Balah where he saw the missiles, the internally displaced person (IDP) camps and the gunships off the shore to give him a sense of what was going on in Gaza.

He kept a record of his experiences, which he is now set to publish as a book titled Gaza Medic, A War Surgeon’s Story 2024.

Many Gazans set up camp in the hospital's grounds on the basis it might be safer (Image: Submitted)

"Normally I will not take a photograph of a patient's face - that is routine wherever I go. Patients said 'Please show my face I want to show the world' and one patient said that to me very clearly and so I did. She had a very complicated case and I put her case on LinkedIn,” he said.

"I had just under 100,000 impressions in a very short time and lots of suggestions about what I should do. Every last one of the comments was clinical and it restored my faith in medics.

"These were all people of the same species as me and all they were interested in was getting the patient better and they did not really care too much about the politics that played behind that and I like that as a doctor. It is very important for me as medics that we are seen to be totally neutral.”