Scarborough NHS doctor urges Government to help evacuate injured father from Gaza

Dr Mohammed Balousha, 32, said his father sustained a traumatic brain injury when he was struck by shrapnel last month in the Southern Gaza Strip – and urged the Foreign Office to intervene to allow his father to cross the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt.

The Scarborough-based trauma and orthopaedic doctor, who is training to become a trauma surgeon, said that his 61-year-old father, Khaled Balousha, was injured while searching for food for his grandchildren.

His family has secured the full cost of his treatment and they said that the only remaining obstacle was crossing the border, which they said requires government-level coordination.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Dr Balousha said he had been in touch with various national and international agencies, departments, and aid groups but had not been able to secure his father’s evacuation.

He said UK authorities told him that as he is not a British citizen “they cannot help me evacuate him”.

He added: “My response was that not only do I live here, I’m a doctor here.

“I save lives and when I’m on call, I’m the first surgical doctor who accepts severely ill patients.”

Dr Balousha, who aims to become a British national and said he was committed to a career as an NHS surgeon, urged the Government to take a “humanitarian approach”.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was approached for a comment but did not respond by the time of publishing.

The online petition, which was started on Saturday (Jan 20) has already been signed by more than 1,500 people.

Khaled Balousha, a father of six and a grandfather of eight, was injured in December and is currently in a Jordanian Field Hospital in Khan Younis.

Dr Balousha said that his father was a businessman who had recently donated two residential apartments to homeless families in Gaza but had since lost all his property due to the war, with his whole family displaced in “extremely difficult conditions”.

The doctor, who has won several awards in recent years, praised his employers and colleagues at the York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for their support and understanding, adding that it was “one of the few things that keeps me going”.

Khan Younis, where Mr Balousha is currently in a field hospital, has seen the heaviest fighting of the year and is sheltering hundreds of thousands of people who fled the north earlier in the war, according to Reuters.

The life-saving surgery that he needs is not said to be available in the region due to the complexity of the treatment and with limited numbers of people permitted to access the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, the NHS doctor is calling on the Government to support his father’s medical evacuation.

Dr Balousha added that he had last heard about his father’s situation three days ago from his family, who he said were sheltering in a nearby UN school.

He added: “I don’t know what’s going on.

"I just need to save his life if he’s alive at the moment.”