Mads Gilbert

Dr. Mads Gilbert is an award-winning Norwegian medical doctor and author, professor emeritus., specialized in anaesthesiology and emergency medicine a...moret The Arctic University of Norway, and former Clinical Director, now senior consultant at Clinic of Prehospital Medicine at The University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsø, where he lives (an Arctic city formally twin city with Gaza City since 2002). His main field of expertise is prehospital and hospital emergency medicine with a focus on trauma, accidental hypothermia, armed conflicts in rural areas, locally as well as in occupied Palestine and the Global South. He has been active as a medical solidarity worker with the Palestinians since his first mission to West-Beirut in 1981 and 1982, later mostly in Gaza over the last 30 years. He also has a broad range of experiences from solidarity medicine projects in Burma, Cambodia, Angola, and Afghanistan. He has worked in global SOUTH as consultant for WHO, UNRWA, NORWAC and for his Norwegian governmental University Hospital. He has authored didactical books and interactive training programs for local medics on trauma care in rural SOUTH (‘Save Lives Save Limbs’, Third World Network 2000) and documented significant effects of local training. His experiences from clinical solidarity work during the Israeli attacks on Gaza are described in his two documentary books: “Eyes in Gaza” (2009) and ‘Night in Gaza’ (2014), as well as numerous scientific peer-reviewed papers on trauma research with Palestinian colleagues in Gaza, and on consequences of Israeli siege and attacks on Gaza and on structural violence. Dr. Gilbert travels annually to Gaza and West Bank to teach and train emergency medicine at Al Azhar University, as well as doing research and healthcare development, always in close cooperation with Palestinian partners and health authorities. He worked in Shifa Medical Complex during the Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2014. Following October 7th 2023, he immediately travelled from Tromsø to Cairo, Egypt with an emergency surgical team, but was denied access by the Israeli Army. He stayed in the region the following three months to contribute to medical relief work and advocacy to stop the Israeli, man-made new Naqba, catastrophe, in Gaza. His latest publications with Palestinian and US colleagues focus on the desperate medical and human situation in Gaza and the dilemmas facing Palestinian healthcare and ‘the relief industry’ vs. future reconstruction, published in The Lancet and other peer-reviewed journals. In 2013, the Norwegian King Harald made him Commander of The Order of St. Olav for his overall contributions to emergency medicine and international medical solidarity.