“It was our first time doing research and we were very excited. “Needlestick Injuries among Dental Students during Clinical Training in Palestine universities” was the name of our research project,….
“It was our first time doing research and we were very excited. “Needlestick Injuries among Dental Students during Clinical Training in Palestine universities” was the name of our research project, supervised by the Jordanian and Palestinian doctor Rawan AlHeresh and conducted by an ambitious group of third level medical students at Al-Azhar University, Gaza.
We worked together for six months, reading a lot of related studies, and having meetings with our supervisor. After six months of hard work, we prepared for our proposal. The joy we felt after finishing our questionnaire and obtaining our Helsinki ethical approval, was indescribable. However, we knew that there was still a lot more work to come.
We had decided to distribute the questionnaire, directly after Eid on May 16th as we had wanted to get everything done before our final exams.
On May 10th the attacks on Gaza happened, and our timeline instantly vanished.
I had forgotten about our research since the beginning of the attack, but among the headlines I read “Third year dental student was killed by the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza”. She would have been part of our “target population” and I would have probably given her one of our questionnaires.
She was just a normal dental student that should have been living a normal college life. She should have been focused on doing her clinical clerkship, conducting research, and living peacefully.”
Islam I. Masood, Medical student, Al-Azhar university Gaza, Palestine