Intended for healthcare professionals

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Feature Christmas 2017: Natural Phenomena

Hospital gardens are making a comeback

BMJ 2017; 359 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j5627 (Published 07 December 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;359:j5627

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Re: Gaza Hospital garden in war

Thanks to Juliet Dobson reporting on NHS hospital gardens and on the wonderful effects they can have on the sick, the worried and the sad. Every hospital should have one.

One of the obscenities of war is the destruction of the beauties and benefits of nature for the sick.

The five storey Al Wafa neuro-rehabilitation hospital in Gaza was totally flatenned by Israel's armed forces in 2014 when 2,200 Gazans were massacred of whom 551 were children..

I had visited it several times to see patients and enjoyed spending a while in the small garden just next door. It had been specially developed by staff to provide patients and families access to nature and tranquillity with shade, shrubs, flowers and few small trees.

What I saw after the invasion was only one stunted ten foot tree surviving, everything else smashed covered with concrete debris. Feeling what had happened gave me a dread hollow empty feeling in my stomach.

We must enable those who work to replace the function of this fine hospital to nurture a garden again..

Competing interests: No competing interests

15 December 2017
christopher j burns-cox
Consultant physician (retd)
North Bristol Trust
Wotton-under-Edge