A Montrose-born medic has recalled the moment he saved the life of a three-year-old girl when a bullet lodged in her neck.
David Anderson spent six months in war-torn Gaza as part of the UK Government’s humanitarian response in 2024.
The 55-year-old, a disaster and conflict lead for Manchester-based charity UK-Med, was called upon to carry out the emergency operation on the youngster.
The bullet had lodged in her after it had ricocheted through her mother’s body.
David said: “You see so many difficult or dramatic injuries – arms, legs, multiple amputations, quite a lot of cases where bullets have ripped through the abdomen.
“We treated a three-year-old girl with a bullet in her neck.
‘Miracle’ girl survived after bullet lodged in neck
“The bullet had passed through the family’s makeshift tent, passed transversely through the mum’s hip then breast before lodging itself in the neck of the child.
“It’s a miracle they survived and the bullet was lodged just millimetres from the little girl’s spinal cord.”
David worked for three hours to remove the bullet.
He said: “It was only because it had gone through mum twice that the velocity had slowed sufficiently not to cause more serious damage to the child.
“The family’s story was heartbreaking.
“They’d fled northern Gaza when their apartment was hit by an airstrike at the beginning of the war.
“They had to step over dead bodies as they made their way south and had been displaced three times by the time they finally reached Al Mawasi.
“The family thought they had found safety but they were wrong.”
The young girl, named Razan, is recovering from her ordeal.
David will now be given an OBE by the King as part of his New Year’s Honours for services to the UK’s emergency health response overseas.
As well as Gaza, the former Angus man has been involved in humanitarian efforts in Lebanon, Ukraine, and Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
David played a key role in establishing two Foreign, Commonweath & Development Office-funded emergency field hospitals – based in Al Mawasi and Deir El Balah – which have treated more than 350,000 patients.
The UK Government allocated £5.5 million last year to UK-Med to fund its life-saving work in Gaza until April.
Conversation