As an emergency doctor, Gaza was unlike anything I've ever encountered
Dr Thienminh Dinh
Emergency physician Dr Thienminh Dinh spent two humanitarian assignments in Gaza with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) last year. She witnessed catastrophic levels of destruction and deprivation of basic human dignity - and now Israel’s obstruction of aid threatens to push the situation even further over the edge.
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I am not unfamiliar with death and suffering. As an emergency physician, it is part and parcel of my role. But my two assignments in Gaza unsettled me in ways I am still processing. Even during the ceasefire, the level of destruction and the daily erosion of basic human dignity were unlike anything I had encountered.
Since the beginning of March, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), along with 36 other humanitarian organisations, has had its work obstructed by Israeli authorities.
Of course, more than 1,000 of my Palestinian colleagues are working desperately on the ground, continuing to provide medical care and save lives – but without additional supplies and support from international staff, it is challenging.
Let me tell you about nine-year-old Hana* who I met in October last year. She was walking along a street with her cousin when a drone spotted them and dropped a bomb. When she woke up, three of her limbs were missing, and her cousin was dead. For months, she did not speak. The psychological trauma was entrenched.
Hana is a triple amputee. Her story is not unique. There are many more like Hana.
In our clinics, four-year-olds draw stick figures lying in pools of blood, while Australian preschoolers draw rainbows, pets, and happy homes. The children in Gaza draw the corpses of their parents, who they have seen bleed to death, while drones and jets drop bombs on their tents. Because this is the world they know. When 37 humanitarian organisations have had their registration revoked in Gaza, who will be left to help them process this profound psychological trauma?
As a result of the last two and a half years, Gaza has suffered catastrophic infrastructure collapse, resulting in a near-universal dependence on water trucking activities from humanitarian organisations. Last year, MSF distributed 700 million litres of water across Gaza - we supplied one third of the population with clean water. While there, I grew accustomed to seeing the daily crowds of thirsty civilians gathered around these water trucks for a few litres of water.
But one morning, driving past one of these distribution points, I saw a small silhouette in the distance – we drove on and I realised it was a little girl, no older than five, gripping a yellow jerry can. When we drew level with her, I saw her eyes: focused, desperate, and determined. I recognised that look. It is the same focus I have seen on my own five-year-old niece when she races her older brother. The same determination Australian kids wear while running on their school sports days.
The difference was, this little girl was running for her life. I knew, as we passed her, that she was too late. No matter how determined she was, her little legs would not carry her fast enough. By the time she arrived, the water would be gone. I could not stop thinking about how disappointed and desperate she would feel going home, exhausted and empty-handed.
As heartbreaking as it was to see that little girl's face that day, it is even harder to know that if further restrictions force MSF to stop working in Gaza, she will wait – day after day, for a truck that may never come.
After the so-called ceasefire, children were still being killed in their tents. They were killed collecting firewood and killed while searching through the rubble of their homes. Last year, a group of malnourished children were killed when bombs struck as they waited in a humanitarian line for nutritional supplements. Others have died in similar attacks while queuing for clean water. I often wonder whether that little girl, with her yellow jerry can, was one of them.
Now, after starving, killing, maiming and orphaning hundreds of thousands of children, Israeli authorities have moved to block the humanitarian organisations providing aid to their communities.
The consequences of this obstruction will be deadly. Surgical capacity will collapse. Clean water distribution will falter. Psychiatric care, maternal care, paediatric care – which are already hanging by a thread – will simply cease in entire areas. What is already catastrophic will become unconscionable.
I am asking Australian politicians to act, because the people of Gaza cannot endure more abandonment. History will remember what Australia chose to condemn – and what we chose to tolerate.
*Name changed for patient confidentiality
About the author
Dr Thienminh Dinh
Dr Thienminh Dinh is a specialist emergency physician from Brisbane. She worked as a medical activity manager with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in Gaza twice in 2025. She is currently on assignment with MSF in South Lebanon. In addition to her work in humanitarian medicine, she is completing subspecialty training in paediatric emergency medicine.
