Gaza- In appreciation of his humanitarian and medical efforts during the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, the American Time Magazine chose the Palestinian doctor, Dr. Younis Awadallah, on its global annual list “Time 100” (Time100 Health) for the year 2025, which includes prominent personalities who are the most influential in the field of health around the world.
When the war broke out on Gaza after the “Al -Aqsa Flood” operation on October 7, 2023, the health and nutritionist, Dr. Awadallah, influenced staying and not leaving and traveling abroad, and returned from his retirement to his work in the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), to contribute to life -saving operations, and he had influential contributions from his leadership of vaccination and rescue campaigns amid complex circumstances, and under the risks and needs And the lack of medical supplies.
This inspiring experience of Dr. Awadallah was the axis of a documentary film entitled “The Silent Threat to Gaza”, which was accomplished by “UNICEF” and monitors a realistic experience of his daily human life during the war, and this film won a prize at a festival in the United States, and the UN Organization is in the process of distributing it to all its offices in 159 countries around the world.
Dr. Awadallah – in a special interview with Al -Jazeera Net – is considered his choice as a Palestinian doctor from Gaza among the most influential in the health field at the global level, a supervising conclusion of his career, and in honor of him as a Palestinian doctor who lived in the experience of the harsh war, without forgetting the participation of this achievement with a “team of colleagues and partners” who worked with them in international institutions and in other health bodies in Gaza.
In the following text of the dialogue:
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Who is Dr. Younis Awadallah?
I am Yunus Ramadan Youssef Awadallah, born in Gaza in the year 1956, for a refugee family from the town of “Al -Mahsmiyya Al -Kabeer” in the year 1948.
I finished the primary and preparatory stage study in the Schools of the Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), and after obtaining a high school diploma, I traveled to study medicine at Al -Azhar University in Egypt and graduated in 1981, and worked in the university hospital as a resident of children’s surgery for about a year and a half.
In 1982, she moved to Saudi Arabia and stayed for 20 years, and then returned to Gaza and worked as director of the Child Health Department at the Palestinian Ministry of Health in 2002. During 8 years it was a successful experience and had a great impact on the approval of programs and protocols for acute diseases in children under 5 years, and support for breastfeeding.
In the year 2010, I joined the “UNICEF”, a health and nutrition specialist for about 12 years until retirement, and during this period we supported health programs in Gaza, and we succeeded in reducing death rates in children and mothers, by developing nursery departments and birth hospitals, supporting vaccination programs, raising the efficiency of workers in the health sector, and emergency management during repeated wars, and other programs and health activities.
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I retired from UNICEF in 2021 and I was 65 years old, why did you return with the outbreak of war?
When the war broke out, colleagues in UNICEF continued to help them prepare a list of purchases of emergency medical supplies, and we were able to accomplish them in a record period in just 3 days, and in appreciation of this work, they signed a new contract with me as a health and nutritionist, which I found in honor of the institution, and an opportunity to contribute to saving lives, especially among children and women and they are the major victims of the war.
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Why did you affect staying and not leaving Gaza despite war and dangers?
I worked in the medical field for decades, and my family are all doctors, and we have grew up and learned from our father and my older brothers from giving to others, and providing people’s need for any personal and subjective accounts and interests, and I am a believer in giving, sacrifice and belonging to this land, and we worked in the health sector is a supreme humanitarian message.
It must be pointed out, along with a humanitarian side in my experience during the war. I reside here in Gaza and I was displaced from my home in Gaza City to the Al -Qarara area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip before moving to the city of Deir Al -Balah in the middle of it, while my patient’s patient with cancer and my four daughters are far from me abroad.
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What did you accomplish during the war experience?
Every day we passed during the war was worse than before, and we worked in dangerous circumstances and great challenges, and huge needs of medical and food supplies to save lives, and despite that we succeeded in bridging the void and provided many medications, and 50 nurseries, so that each child has one custody instead of sharing every 4 children in one, and we contributed to improving the quality of services in order to control epidemics and diseases.
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What are the most prominent of these challenges?
Field technical work, and during the field visits to follow up the work, the movement was very dangerous despite coordination, and more than once the shells fell around us and close to us, and there is no guarantee for our lives, and our souls on our palms.
In addition, we faced suffering from a psychological point of view, where there is no comfort, sleep, no safety, as well as crises that hinder work in terms of the lack of Internet, interruption from the world and living in isolation.
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Is the war experience are the most difficult in your career?
Certainly, this is an unprecedented war and it is the most difficult experience not only in my career as a doctor, but in my human career, and therefore, based on the dangerous and complex circumstances around us, achieving any goal was a great achievement.
During it, many difficult and influential situations lived, in terms of destruction and killing, and many scenes harmful to any human being, especially the large numbers of victims among children and women.
This war produced other parallel wars related to the spread of diseases and epidemics, and another in which everyone suffers, especially women and children, in order to survive, and this has increased the difficulty of the task and made more efforts to control and the continuity of work.
UNICEF has documented my experience as a pensioner in a film that was a human story in terms of real documentation and coexistence during work and even during short rest periods, and ensures humanitarian positions in which I did not possess myself and cried, and won an award at a United States festival that focuses on the most influential personalities in the medical field around the world.
This film was filmed for 10 months, 32 minutes, and UNICEF is in the process of distributing it to all its offices in 159 countries around the world.
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Based on this inspiring experience, the American Time magazine chose you among the 100 most influential personalities in the field of health around the world, what does that mean to you?
On a personal level, as a Palestinian doctor, this choice was considered an excellent conclusion, a coronation of my career, and in recognition of my efforts and appreciation for everything I presented to humanity, and I am still ready to work until the last moment of my life.
On the professional level, I do not pretend to succeed alone, and this achievement is not personal.
(Tagstotranslate) Arabic (T) (T) (T) Palestine