Practical life: providing post-earthquake care

Dr. Briony Boynton describes his work in a field hospital in Turkoglu, in the weeks following the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria in February. As told to Sally Howard

7 a.m., February 24, 2023, I wake up in a tent in Türkoğlu near the city of Gaziantep, as the temperature drops to minus seven degrees overnight. I’m in two sleeping bags stacked on top of each other. I’m here for six weeks as a UK-Med field GP, my second stint at the humanitarian charity after a stint last year in Poltava, a Ukraine-Russia border region. I am helping Turkish healthcare respond to the February earthquake that killed more than 48,000 people and displaced millions from their homes in southern Turkey and northwest Syria.

8.30 The clinic starts. There are 32 employees here, but I am the only general practitioner who works in a field hospital that can treat up to 100 patients a day. Fortunately, two more GPs will arrive soon. I work alongside a hospital run by the Department of Defense, which handles surgical cases, and I’m in a clinic with pediatricians and obstetricians.

Many people can’t get medicine because their homes have been destroyed, so supporting them is a big part of my workload. There are coughs, colds and diarrhea too because of the camp conditions. Families are very concerned about the effects of earthquakes and homelessness on the health of their children, so we see a lot of children.

1.30 Lunch is intermittent, so there is always someone on hand to treat patients. At first we ate food from military ration packs, which was a mixture of mush flavors and exactly the same, but now the logistics arm has arranged a canteen, which is much better: rice and noodle dishes, meat dishes and fresh vegetables.

I was a medic in the navy for 10 years and back home in Chichester I work as a bailiff with the army so I can do outside jobs like this. I’ve worked on cruise ships and on the James Clark Ross Marine Research Ship in Antarctica. I was also a doctor on Australian Survivor, a reality series where I treated syncope and dengue fever. I even drained a cast member’s dental abscess on camera. Life is very diverse.

What’s nice about Humanitarian Settings is the esprit de corps: we use local medical students and newly qualified doctors as interpreters, and it’s rewarding to get to know them and learn about general practice in parts of the world.

2 p.m. Return to the clinic. One of the unique challenges in Türkiye is the lack of buildings. Usually when I’m deployed in the field we take over hospitals, or at least buildings, with solid walls and ceilings. But here, the local hospital isn’t safe to go in, so we’re doing everything under the cloth.

Fortunately, UK-Med trained us in tented conditions so we knew what to expect. There’s no privacy, however: It’s a hustle around you while consultations are taking place, which is hard when you’re dealing with terrified, traumatized patients.

7 p.m. After dinner, we have a debrief – how we’re doing for capacity and medication. We expect to be here until spring, or until the Turkish government builds healthcare capacity. The scale of human needs is huge. It’s getting warmer now, but hygiene is a huge challenge in the camps, making the spread of infectious disease a constant risk. There will be long-term mental health issues in the population, which we are just beginning to see.

It’s 10pm, I’m sleeping really well, which is helpful in an area still suffering aftershocks. He’s a station commander at Rothera, a British Antarctic Survey base, and he was posted there shortly before I went to Turkey, which led to a scramble to get our neighbor to feed the cats. I look forward to coming home in a few weeks to cuddle and take a hot bath.

Profile: Dr. Briony Boynton

Roles: Locum and Humanitarian GP in Chichester, West Sussex

• UK-Med is currently recruiting for Emergency Physicians. Find out more at uk-med.org

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