Medal recognises Gaza work as valuable, medic says

Dr Newport said receiving the medal was a "huge honour and privilege"

An anaesthetist who was sent to Gaza five times in a year to help to provide care has said being awarded a Humanitarian Medal by the King was recognition that the work was "valuable".

The medal, which was first introduced in 2023, recognises the service of people who work to support human welfare during or in the aftermath of a crisis.

Dr Matthew Newport, an NHS medic from Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester, was one of 14 frontline medical responders to receive the medal at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

The 37-year-old, who also volunteers with North West Air Ambulance, said the medal was a "huge honour and privilege".

Dr Newport, who works at the Royal Blackburn Hospital, was deployed to Gaza five times over the past 12 months by the UK-Med charity, which was part of the UK Government's humanitarian response to the Israel/Gaza crisis.

He said the medal was "really just recognition that the work is valuable".

He said his work had been part of the charity's support for the "phenomenal hundreds of local Palestinian staff" and had been helping to build "a safe space where they can do the heavy lifting and the day-to-day work".

Dr Matthew Newport said there was a huge demand for care in the region

Dr Newport said conditions in Gaza had been "apocalyptic" and that while many people would "think about the bombs and the blast injuries", there was also "the normal stuff... the diabetes, the blood pressure, the cancer, the heart failure".

He said medics in the region also had to deal with "all the bits that are not trauma related" but connected to the crisis, such as "malnutrition, diarrhoea, infectious diseases".

"It really is a full smorgasbord of medical traumas and presentations," he added.

"This medal is an honour, but the real recognition must go to the local medics who have been working around the clock under impossible conditions."

Among the others receiving a medal alongside Dr Newport were research midwife Alessandra Morelli, who was deployed to Libya in the wake of Storm Daniel, and former British Army nursing officer Paula Tobin, who was deployed three times to UK-Med's Al Mawasi field hospital in Gaza.