Gazan doctor seeks help for Scottish research placement

Palestinian doctor Mohammed Hammad is looking for help to get from Gaza to Scotland to complete a research project at Edinburgh University.

The people’s doctor

Hammad completed his medical training in late 2025, during a brief lull in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Since then, living in a tent in the Mawasi concentration camp, he has been treating sick and wounded Palestinians under Israel’s illegal blockade of food, fuel and medicines.

Now he has secured a year-long neuroscience research fellowship under consultant neurologist Prof Rustam al-Shahi Salman. The project will evaluate stroke care in Gaza to find improvements that can be implemented despite Israel’s occupation and genocide. However, the placement and travel costs are not funded. Hammad, who is from Rafah but was displaced to Mawasi in May 2024, is seeking financial support and has set up a crowdfund to raise cash for the placement.

Defying the odds

He told Edinburgh Live:

During the war, I volunteered for six months in the Neurology Department at Nasser Medical Complex – the only operating hospital in southern Gaza, serving 1.2 million Gazans. During my final year of medical school, I supported patient care, documentation, neurological emergency management, and CT interpretation under extremely high-pressure conditions.

Hospitals faced severe shortages of electricity, medications, imaging access, and basic medical supplies. There were periods of overcrowding, limited diagnostic capacity, and constant uncertainty.

Some of the most difficult situations involved managing acute stroke cases without access to thrombolysis or advanced stroke unit care, treating prolonged seizures with limited medication availability, and assessing traumatic brain injuries with restricted imaging capacity. There is currently no MRI available in Gaza, and in the south there has effectively been only one functioning CT scanner serving a population of around 1.2 million people.

Working under siege

On his experience working as a doctor under siege, he said:

The difficulty was not only the medical complexity, but having to make critical decisions in severely resource-constrained and high-pressure conditions. Despite this, healthcare workers continued to provide care with remarkable resilience.

My immediate family is safe at the moment, but we live under very difficult humanitarian conditions, displacement, limited access to consistent electricity, clean water, and stable infrastructure. For the wider population, daily life is defined by uncertainty and rebuilding from repeated disruption.

This opportunity to come to Edinburgh represents more than academic progression. It is a chance to gain structured research training, international mentorship, and exposure to advanced stroke systems of care — knowledge that I hope to bring back to strengthen neurological services and medical education in Gaza.

Featured image via the Canary