"Well, now I can finally say, 'Welcome to Gaza,'" Dr Ahmed tells me with a straight face and a hint of sarcasm.
It is my fifth day in Gaza, and we have already met several times. However, there is a specific reason he says this now.
My first three days in the Strip were marked by an uneasy calm. There were occasional sounds of gunfire and airstrikes, but none had reached our hospital. I spent my time learning from doctors in the Emergency Department at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis.
Most of the patients I saw during those days had conditions that would be familiar in any emergency department around the world — heart attacks, chest infections, heart failure, asthma attacks and kidney stones.
From the fourth day onwards, everything changed.
Casualties from airstrikes began arriving, at least once a day, sometimes more. Beyond the airstrikes, there were also victims of gunfire from areas near the Yellow Line, an arbitrary boundary established by the Israeli Defence Forces that has rendered up to 70 percent of Gaza inaccessible. It was after my second influx of airstrike casualties that Dr Ahmed sarcastically welcomed me to Gaza.
"This is the norm here," he reminded me. The earlier calm had been the exception.
Dr Ahmed is an intern doctor, yet he worked with the confidence and composure of a seasoned professional. He was in the latter years of medical school when the war broke out and began volunteering at the hospital. At the height of the conflict, Nasser Medical Complex sometimes handled 15 to 20 mass casualty incidents (MCIs) in a single day, with each incident bringing as many as 300 patients.
Like many senior medical students, he volunteered in the Emergency Department, where experienced doctors took him under their wing and trained him amidst the chaos. By the time he officially graduated — in the middle of a war, no less — he was already practising like a fully-fledged emergency physician.
Like most of the doctors and nurses I worked alongside, he possessed a remarkable resilience that allowed him to carry on despite unimaginable personal hardship. During my time in Gaza, his father fell ill and later died. Throughout his father's illness, Dr Ahmed continued reporting to work every day, taking brief breaks only to visit him in the intensive care unit.
One of the doctors who mentored Dr Ahmed was Dr Majid.
Tall, thin and unassuming, he was the department's most senior resident. Beneath his modest appearance was an exceptional clinician with an encyclopaedic understanding of medicine. Junior doctors constantly sought his advice, and he answered every question with effortless confidence. There seemed to be very little he did not know.
Speaking candidly one morning, he reflected on the darkest days of the war.
"We were displaced, not once but multiple times. Our house was destroyed, there was no water or electricity, and at work it was complete chaos. A 24-hour shift meant 24 hours of constant work without a break. I'd collapse after every shift, rest for a day, then return to do it all over again. We were putting patients on ventilators on the floor. I was inserting chest tubes in staircases. There was blood and chaos everywhere.”
"On top of that, there was no food. The famine drained every ounce of strength from my body. But we kept working because there was nothing else we could do,” he added.
The famine remains one of Gaza's deepest collective memories.
"I gave birth when there was no food available, and I struggled to breastfeed my child. There was no formula on the market," one nurse recalls, her eyes drifting away.
Another doctor, who is currently breastfeeding her own child, says she no longer follows any dietary restrictions because she never knows when food shortages might return.
"I'd rather eat well while I can."
Because of the demands of her work, she brings her young son with her during 24-hour shifts so she can continue breastfeeding him.
Two doctors describe the famine and the desperate search for food at the notorious GHF aid sites in strikingly different ways.
One likened it to ‘The Hunger Games’, where people died simply trying to obtain food.
Another compared the crowds walking through narrow caged corridors towards aid distribution points to ‘The Walking Dead’.
"So many people came in with gunshot wounds during those days," Dr Majid says, taking a drag from his vape.
"One day we'd receive only head injuries, another day only chest wounds, another day just leg injuries. It almost felt like they were practising target shooting."
This account has also been corroborated by a recent United Nations report on Gaza.
My own time in the Strip never reached those extremes.
Yet airstrike victims arrived almost daily.
Mangled limbs, exposed internal organs, shattered faces and bodies torn apart became a once- or twice-daily reality.
The medical teams responded with unwavering professionalism. A dedicated security team controlled anxious crowds while doctors and nurses moved with remarkable precision every time another critically injured patient arrived.
One evening, a man suffering blast injuries to his face, chest and arm was rushed in.
Within minutes, one doctor had intubated him despite the overwhelming amount of blood — something I would never have managed. Another inserted a chest tube to relieve life-threatening pressure on his heart and lungs.
At one point, I placed my finger through a wound in his chest to confirm that his heart was still beating.
The sheer speed and coordination of the team saved his life.
He lost an arm and will require facial reconstruction, but he survived.
The worst day I experienced in Gaza saw around 60 people injured in drone strikes, although most were transferred to another hospital.
The following day, I spoke with Dr Qaasim, head of the Emergency Department.
"Yes, it was difficult," he told me.
"But you have to understand, there was a time when 60 blast injuries arrived within five minutes. Compared to that, these are 'good times' — if such a thing even exists."
Dr Qaasim is a dual specialist in Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care Medicine, leading both departments at Nasser Medical Complex.
Despite the war, he has continued teaching and conducting research. One of his studies, focusing on managing blood around the lining of the heart after severe trauma, is attracting international attention and could eventually change emergency medicine practices worldwide.
While blast and gunshot injuries dominate much of the department's workload, ordinary illnesses have never disappeared.
Older patients still suffer heart attacks.
Children continue to experience febrile seizures.
Teenagers still develop appendicitis.
Cancer, respiratory diseases and countless other medical conditions persist regardless of war.
Instead, shortages of essential medicines have created entirely new emergencies.
Doctors are seeing an unusually high number of patients with diabetic ketoacidosis — a life-threatening complication affecting people with Type 1 diabetes who depend on insulin.
For families displaced into tents, keeping insulin refrigerated has become nearly impossible.
Without electricity, the medication deteriorates and becomes far less effective.
Yet the endless flow of patients never diminishes the staff's professionalism.
Every doctor and nurse arrives impeccably dressed, their clothes clean and neatly pressed.
This is despite the fact that many have been displaced several times and now live in tents or temporary shelters.
Their salaries have also fallen dramatically. Many are paid only once every 40 to 45 days rather than monthly.
To survive, some take additional shifts in NGO-run field hospitals to supplement their incomes as living costs continue to soar.
Others receive no income at all.
Only about five of Gaza's original 36 hospitals remain operational.
Many general practitioners who once ran private clinics have seen them destroyed.
They now volunteer in hospitals, often receiving no guaranteed payment, though departments occasionally manage to gather small stipends whenever possible.
Despite everything, some parts of the healthcare system continue functioning remarkably well.
The Emergency Department operates in many ways like one in the United Kingdom.
Ironically, as someone who works in the UK, I found it easier to adapt to an emergency department in Gaza than I did in Bangladesh.
There are four fully equipped resuscitation bays capable of delivering intensive care, along with six additional ventilators should demand increase.
Separate areas accommodate walk-in patients and those requiring observation, while a large tent outside provides additional bed space.
Equipment remained largely adequate, although recent shortages caused by the blockade are becoming increasingly apparent, particularly for disposable medical supplies.
The department also maintains impressive crowd control during mass casualty incidents — something rarely seen in Bangladesh.
Emergency Medicine has only recently been recognised as a specialty in Bangladesh, meaning government hospitals still lack formally trained emergency physicians. Outside private corporate hospitals, few emergency departments possess the capacity to provide comprehensive critical care.
The Ministry of Health also operates staff buses every morning and afternoon.
Each bus follows designated routes, transporting hundreds of healthcare workers.
However, because buses operate only twice daily, staff are effectively restricted to four shift patterns: six-hour shifts from 8am to 2pm; 18-hour shifts from 2pm until 8am the following day; standard 24-hour shifts; or gruelling 30-hour shifts beginning at 8am and ending at 2pm the next day.
Education somehow continues despite everything.
Medical students still attend clinical placements.
Departments continue teaching sessions.
Even in the middle of relentless emergencies, senior doctors pause to train junior colleagues.
I remember one blast victim awaiting transfer to the operating theatre. During the short wait, a senior resident calmly used the opportunity to teach a junior doctor how to perform a bedside ultrasound to detect internal abdominal injuries.
The resilient façade does, however, occasionally crack.
Memories of the famine still haunt many.
Nothing, though, evokes greater sadness than conversations about home.
Harun, a nurse, eagerly showed me photographs of the house he had painstakingly built, describing its design, the chandelier above the living room and the sacrifices his family had made to create it.
Then he swiped to the next images.
Rubble.
An airstrike had reduced everything to dust.
His brother's body was recovered from the ruins several days later.
Walking through the markets of Khan Yunis, Dr Zuhaina spoke quietly about life in the displacement camps.
"The space is tiny. There's no electricity or running water. The toilets are shared by many families. My son keeps getting sick. Most days I feel terrible. My husband and I argue constantly because of these living conditions.
"Some days I feel like giving up on everything — my work, my residency, even life itself."
Dr Abdel Haleem, one of the younger doctors, offers another perspective.
"Everyone here has PTSD. I've thrown myself completely into work. I even come in on my days off because it helps me avoid processing everything I've seen. Besides, everyone here has become my second family. I feel less pain with my colleagues than I do at home."
And yet, despite these memories, these losses and this exhaustion, they return to work every day.
They arrive neatly dressed, full of energy and quiet determination.
I truly stood among heroes, and I learnt more from them than I could ever have imagined.
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Raiiq Ridwan is an UK-based doctor and traveller. He recently travelled to the Gaza Strip as part of a humanitarian medical mission.