Watching back over videos made through the years to show the work of our Foundation, we are struck by their timeless nature.
This short film is an example of this - filmed in Ramallah and London in 2022 - the friendship between our Co-Founder Elly Nott, and our lead faculty surgeon in Palestine, Dr Mariam Aweidah, was at that time an emblem of our values.
And it still stands to be.
One of the recurring comments we receive from the surgeons we train in war zones, is that by visiting them in their land to conduct training and surgical missions, they see they have not been forgotten.
As Mariam says: The spirit of the DNF is all about family.
In 2022, we could not have foreseen the situation that Palestinian surgeons are facing now, every day. All over the West Bank and Gaza, doctors are pushed to the limits, trying to save lives in conditions that were unimaginable, even then.
We continue to support them with surgical missions to Gaza, where our faculty surgeons including Dr Saladin Sawan, Dr Ammar Darwish, and our Co-Founder Professor David Nott, have all visited in some cases multiple times to support doctors working there.
And we are committed to delivering Hostile Environment Surgical Trainings (HEST®) in Ramallah, lead by Mariam Aweidah as local faculty, and supported by visiting international faculty. Mariam now leads a cohort of Palestinian faculty surgeons who have completed our rigorous trainings in Palestine and the UK.
One of these surgeons, Osama Atallah (pictured here) attended our HEST® UK course in Edinburgh last year.
‘I’m very happy to be here, because really, what I read in my books, I saw it here in practise and I heard it from the people who wrote these books.’
With every encounter with surgeons from countries where we work from Myanmar to Ukraine, we are moved and strengthened by the sense of common purpose and shared humanity. These values will always transcend difference of culture and language in a fractured world.
Once again, thank you for reading. We depend on your interest and support.
