“Whenever the ambulance pulled up to the hospital and I ran out to treat the patients, I would wonder: will someone from my family be inside?”
Dr Omar Amouri, an orthopedic surgeon, is doing his morning rounds in Hamam al-Alil field hospital, south of Mosul. During peacetime, the Mosul native used to work in one of the city’s main hospitals as a doctor. All of that was upended by the recent conflict, when his daily rounds had to be done under terrifying conditions.
Today he is wearing his ‘lucky’ navy blue scrubs—the ones he had on the day that fighters came to the hospital, held staff and patients hostage, and threatened repeatedly to kill them. He managed to escape and sought shelter in a mosque.
“I was reborn that day,” he says. “I felt reborn.”
But his ordeal was by no means over. As the Iraqi Army entered Mosul during the battle to retake the city last year, militants tried to capture him.
“They were hunting me. They came to my house, so I ran to my parents’ house. They jumped over the fence with a big tank of gas, threatening to burn the house.”
Once more he eluded their grip and, after two and a half years of living in fear in Mosul, in 2016, he escaped the city. He left for Baghdad with the intention of continuing his studies.
Most people would consider what Omar lived through in Mosul quite enough danger for one lifetime. Yet despite all he endured, when he was asked to return to the area, Omar did so without hesitation. In 2017 he began work at the Hamam al-Alil field hospital.
“For me it was mandatory. I need to help injured people,” he says.
The field hospital, one of four established and supplied by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the early months of 2017, played a critical role in saving lives during the military campaign to retake Mosul. The hospitals received patients from WHO-coordinated trauma stabilization points on the frontlines. Thousands of lives were saved because patients were triaged within the first hour of injury.
“WHO did a great job in this and other field hospitals. Honestly, if this hospital was not here, who would receive the casualties of the war? We needed that. Mosul needed that.”
The caseload at the Hamam al-Alil field hospital is lighter these days, about 10-15 operations a day, mostly elective. The hospital is treating the so-called ‘third wave’ of war, such as those with neglected fractures. It also receives patients from inside Mosul, where most hospitals are heavily damaged. Dr Amouri is proud of the hospital’s success treating serious burns, even without a specialized burn unit.
WHO continues to support Hamam al-Alil, and is helping to relocate two other field hospitals located in Athba and Haj Ali to West Mosul, which lost most of its major medical facilities during last year’s military campaign.
The contrast with the early days of the Mosul battle—the despair and the desperation—is stark. Dr Amouri remembers an older man who had lost his right arm.
“I approached him to examine him and he told me not to do anything for him. He said, ‘I lost all my family; my daughters and my grandsons. I have nothing left to live for, so please leave me, I want to die’.”
Dr Amouri was born, raised, and educated in Mosul. Much of the city is now in ruins. He grieves for it, and fears for its future.
“Mosul has become unrecognizable. All the things that I loved and knew, they are all gone. I’m happy to see people trying to rebuild their lives, but the city is destroyed. It’s not there anymore.”
Yet he works on; his commitment to his fellow Iraqis unwavering.
“I believe it’s my responsibility. Even when I’m not on call, I’m not on duty, I hear the ambulance and I feel I need to go and help. It’s a part of my life. I need to help injured people. If I don’t do it, who will?”