\n<\/p>\n
“I just want a ceasefire so that we can catch up,” Dr Victoria Rose tells her video diary filmed inside a Gazan hospital, as the casualties kept coming.<\/p>\n
The consultant plastic surgeon recently took leave from her day job at St Thomas’ Hospital in London to work voluntarily in Gaza, helping victims of its war with Israel.<\/p>\n
“Appalling” levels of malnutrition and starvation had set in by the time she visited in May, and the number of casualties rapidly increased, she tells the BBC.<\/p>\n
“The mass casualties just didn’t stop. It was really shocking.”<\/p>\n
At first, Miss Rose and her colleagues were mainly treating blast injuries – a “huge number” of severe burns as well as shrapnel injuries.<\/p>\n
But towards the end of her stay, they became “totally absorbed with gunshot injuries,” she said. “That’s we really all we saw.”<\/p>\n
It’s work she says is difficult, but she says that when she is in Gaza, she has no time to think about the level of suffering she sees.<\/p>\n
“I’m just trying to get as much done as I possibly can in the very short amount of time that I have, so that we can make a difference.”<\/p>\n
Miss Rose volunteers for the charity IDEALS (International Disaster and Emergency Aid with Long-term Support), which has been sending medics to the region since 2009.<\/p>\n
“It is hard but you go in knowing what you’re doing… because of the lack of plastic surgeons in Gaza, you go in knowing that anything you do will make a big difference.<\/p>\n
“So, I mean to just work and keep going.”<\/p>\n