A surgeon who once appeared in hit TV drama The Crown has returned to the New Forest after a stint volunteering in Gaza. 

Professor Nizam Mamode, 62, from Brockenhurst, who appeared in the first series of the royal historical drama as Sir Clement Price Thomas, has been helping out at Nasser Hospital for the past month. 

Previously clinical lead of transplant surgery at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and honorary consultant at Great Ormond Street, he also performed the UK’s first robot-assisted kidney transplant.

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Now retired from the NHS, he has recently helped establish transplant programmes in Armenia and Mauritius, and is currently working on a paediatric transplant service in Zambia.

Prof Mamode said: "I knew that I had the surgical skills that were needed. I’d worked overseas before, so I knew I had the mindset to cope, and I could see that the situation was pretty desperate.

"I’ve been in a number of conflict zones, but this was different. Normally in a war zone, people can leave. In Gaza, not only can they not get out, but the area they’re restricted to is shrinking all the time.

"They’re being continually bombed. The level of suffering is astonishing. Even though I followed the situation before I went, the reality was deeply shocking. It was so much worse than I had imagined."

The death toll in Gaza surpassed 40,000 last month, according to its Hamas-run health ministry. The latest Israel-Gaza conflict is now approaching the end of its first year.

"I was anxious about going in of course," Prof Mamode continued.

"It’s the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers. During the first couple of weeks, there was constant bombing, and the building would shudder.

"We didn’t leave the hospital for the entire month we were there because we felt it was the safest place to be. But the staff we were working with would have to travel to and from their tents.

"Most of my work was dealing with women and children with trauma injuries, opening abdomens or chests and stopping bleeding. Operating conditions were awful. There were flies in the theatres and we were running out of swabs and gowns. I remember operating on a child and part way through they said: ‘That’s the last swab.’ So all we could do was scoop the blood out with our hands while we try to find the source of the bleeding.

"‘I’ve never experienced anything like it."