Gaza to safety

Hi, my name is Heather O'Reilly, and this is my friend Doctor Aaed Mohammed.

Before the war, he was manager of Smile Medical Team Gaza.

The team cared for children with cancer, women, and the elderly with diabetic foot disease. They also implemented many campaigns to provide food baskets to the poor, winter clothes for children, and recreational trips, study tools and games for children with cancer.

Not long after the war broke out, his house was bombed in what was almost certainly a targeted attack, because he is a doctor.

Fortunately, his family were just leaving to evacuate, but nevertheless they were injured.

Dr Aaed Mohammed has five children under 12.

When the hospital he was working at ceased to function, they were displaced again, where he continued his work as a doctor, in really soul destroying, terrible conditions.

Last week he received his own family, in a state of shock, at the hospital, after indiscriminate bombing of the refugee camp where they had been displaced to. All his children were injured, and his mother quite seriously.

My friend is at his wits end trying to shoulder the dual responsibilities of his family and his patients, while living in a hell-on-earth type scenario.

He is completely burnt out, but he will not leave, or "surrender his professional and humanitarian duty", as he puts it.

But although he is a proud man who is loathe to ask for help for his own family, being accustomed only to fundraisers for others, in his words again, "After the war, the world became narrow, and my paths were cut off."

So last week he asked me if I could set up a gofundme, in order to evacuate his immediate family, and pay for their medical care in Egypt. And since then, I have been trying to shoulder this massive responsibility as best I can.

The amount of money he has asked me to raise will only cover the extortionate cost of crossing the border into Egypt for his mother, his wife, his five children, and his young brother, also a minor, and medical costs once they get there, particularly the urgent care his mother requires.

Thank you.