Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Situation

Kirsteen Sullivan Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Ferguson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The situation is of course getting worse rather than better as we watch the actions in northern Gaza unfold. The presentation that some of us observed from Professor Mamode was heart-rending in many ways. He also spoke about not having medicines or anaesthetics for people, including children having major surgery. The children were being operated on in hospital beds, the adults on the floor. He also spoke about the young intensive care doctor he knew who contracted hepatitis A and died because of the lack of a relatively straightforward medication. As a colleague said that night, the silence of the room at the end of Professor Mamode’s presentation was powerful.

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I would also like to thank Dr Mamode and his colleagues for the incredible bravery and compassion that they have shown to those living in desperate circumstances. They have not only shown immense care but worked tirelessly to shed light on the plight of those people, as we saw in his testimony to last week’s meeting of the International Development Committee. Does my hon. Friend agree that the absolute horrors of treating children and adults without the medical basics, such as swab sanitisers or even anaesthetic, cannot continue and there must be safe routes for medical provisions to enter Gaza? Does she also agree that there must be a future with long-term physical and mental health support?

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions are interventions, not speeches. As the hon. Lady can see, there are quite a lot of Members who wish to participate in this debate. We cannot have speeches under the guise of interventions.