Israeli doctor, 65, returns to work - in war's danger zones

Dr Nitzan was involved in the recent rescue of civilians from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol: “We saw what had happened to them. It was terrible.”

She has also been near the shelling in Dnipro: “The sirens go off very often. You feel the war here. It is such a big country that in some parts you do feel that things are normal, but it’s absolutely not.”

She is clear-eyed about the task ahead for her and her colleagues: “WHO’s biggest challenge is to address the war, I call it a disease. The war is a disease, but the cure is peace. We are providing a life-saving intervention for people, but this is not solving the problem here. We are running, to prepare the health system, the workforce, the people, and then responding… but this will not end, until there is some kind of agreement to allow people to go back to their lives.”

Dr Nitzan and her colleagues deal patients with conditions such as cancer, hypertension, and patients who require dialysis. “Then there are ‘new diseases’, which involve trauma, injuries and mental health” — the latter often involving children, and of which Dr Nitzan, who trained as a paediatrician, is sensitively aware.

Though she is clear that “you never get used to war”, Dr Nitzan, who lives in Atlit on Israel’s north coast, acknowledges the benefit of living amid conflict and completing army service at home: “It helps me to take personal responsibility.  I know that when there are sirens, I go to the shelter, and I make sure that the team knows what to do. In war you cannot trust what happens.”

She has promised her family that she will return to Israel “in a few months”. But she says: “I will always be ready to jump on a plane and go back to help.”