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Scots nurse helped save child with bullet in neck

Kieran Seager/UK-Med A young child, Razan, holds a large, gold bullet. She is wearing a pink coat with woolly lining and looks forlornly into the camera.Kieran Seager/UK-Med
Rawan was photographed holding the 7.92mm bullet removed from her neck

A Scottish nurse has described the moment he helped save the life of a three-year-old Palestinian girl after a bullet ricocheted through her mother's body and got lodged in her neck.

David Anderson, from Montrose in Angus, spent six months in Gaza last year working for the humanitarian charity UK-Med.

The 55-year-old medic said it was a "miracle" the child survived, after the bullet became lodged millimetres from the girl's spinal cord, requiring three hours of life-saving surgery.

Mr Anderson - who has also worked in countries such as Lebanon, Ukraine and Sierra Leone - has been recognised with an OBE in the King's New Year Honours list.

UK-Med A man, David Anderson, looks into the camera. He has grey hair, blue eyes and glasses and is smiling kindly into the camera. He stands in an airport. UK-Med
David Anderson worked in Uk Foreign Office-funded hospitals in al-Mawasi and Deir al-Balah

Mr Anderson was stationed in a field hospital in the Gazan town of al-Mawasi when he met three-year-old Razan.

Her family had fled from Northern Gaza after their apartment was hit by an air strike at the beginning of the war in October 2023.

They had been displaced three times before they reached al-Mawasi.

Mr Anderson said: "They thought they had found safety, but they were wrong."

A bullet passed through the family's makeshift tent, through her mother's hip and breast, before becoming lodged in Razan's neck.

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."

After three hours of surgery, the 7.92mm bullet was removed.

Razan and her mother are now making a full physical recovery.

Kieran Seager/UK-Med A young child, Razan, is being held in the arms of her father. Her father has a dark beard and a black top on, and looks out of the frame. Razan has a mop of brown hair and large brown eyes and is looking into the camera.Kieran Seager/UK-Med
Razan and her father had to "step over dead bodies" as they fled from North Gaza

Although Razan survived, many other causalities Mr Anderson came across during his time in Gaza did not have the same outcome.

Recounting one experience, he said: "I remember a seven-year-old kid with three big bullets that had ripped through their chest and gone straight out their back.

"An uncle carried her in distraught, but I would have defied the best trauma surgeon in the world to have saved them...Every day is horror working in Gaza right now."

The current war in Gaza began on 7 October 2023 after Hamas-led gunmen attacked southern Israeli border communities, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Israel responded with a massive military campaign which has devastated Gaza and killed more 46,700 people - the majority of them civilians- according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.

On 15 January 2025, Israel and Hamas agreed a ceasefire deal which would halt the war in Gaza and see the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

UK-Med A CT scan image which shows a small child's skeleton (Razan's) with a bullet lodged in the neckUK-Med
Mr Anderson said that "it's quite frankly a miracle" that Razan survived her injuries

Mr Anderson has worked in a number of war zones, such as Lebanon, Myanmar and Ukraine, as well as assisting during the world's deadliest Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in 2014.

He said that working in these areas has meant the constant sound of bombing now feels like "background noise".

"The first time it happened to me, I found it a difficult thing to cope with - it's terrifying," Mr Anderson said.

"I struggle to describe the feeling now, but so many people haven't been so lucky when bombs have landed."

UK-Med David Anderson and another man are standing in a sandy environment. David wears a blue bullet proof vest and the other man wears a gilet which identifies him as an aid worker. Three children stand in the background.UK-Med
The UK government allocated £5.5m to UK-Med to fund work in Gaza

Mr Anderson has played a key role in setting up two UK government funded field hospitals in Gaza, which have treated more than 350,000 patients.

In recognition of his services to "the UK's emergency health response overseas", he has been awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the King's New Year Honours list.

Mr Anderson said he was "shocked but honoured" to receive the accolade and added that it reflected the "hard work and dedication" of the whole UK-Med team.