Hamilton based plastic surgeon headed to Libya

Dr. Omar Bengezi

 (Article from the TORONTO STAR)
On Saturday evening, the Hamilton-based plastic surgeon and his longtime friend, Dr. Fathi Abuzgaya, an orthopedic surgeon from Pickering, will board a plane for Cairo.
Once they touch down, the doctors plan to use money raised by Canada’s Libyan community to fill a car with medical supplies like sutures, insulin, gloves, sterile dressings and anesthetic. After that comes an arduous 20-some hour trip to the Libyan-Egyptian border with a team of doctors from the U.S. and U.K. A third Canadian, Dr. Abdullah Shmesa from Windsor, is awaiting their arrival.

“I got some calls from my friends (in Libya) that are doctors and they asked me, ‘Please, please, we want you now. If you don’t come now we don’t want you at anytime,’ ” said an emotional Bengezi, 56.
“I have to go, they are human. . . . If somebody asks you personally to help as a doctor you shouldn’t say no. Nobody can say no.”


The team will travel to the city of Benghazi, in the eastern part of the country, currently believed to be controlled by pro-democracy protesters after violent clashes with pro-government forces left hundreds dead and wounded.

All eyes are on the capital of Tripoli, as strongman Moammar Gadhafi vies to maintain power as the country teeters on civil war. On Friday, the United Nations High Commissioner said thousands may be dead in a crackdown that is “escalating alarmingly.”
Bengezi and Abuzgaya told the Star of desperate accounts from doctors on the ground who say injuries — mostly from bullet wounds — are “tremendous”, that Libya’s hospitals are overburdened and that there aren’t enough supplies. The humanitarian crisis is only getting worse, they say.
Gadhafi “has shown his true face. He’s a madman that the world has to stop,” said Abuzgaya, 54, appealing to the international community to intervene.


Abuzgaya plans to assess the situation as soon as he arrives, hopefully paving the way for other doctors to follow. He said many physicians from Canada — Libyan and non-Libyan alike — want to come and help however they can.
Bengezi’s voice trembled as he spoke of violent images of the conflict now coming to light. He believes Gadhafi will stop at nothing to retain power and thinks as many as one million people could be killed if something isn’t done.

Yet, both doctors are leaving their worried families at home in Ontario and putting their lives on the line. There is simply too much at stake.
“It’s a feeling of sadness and anger and frustration, but also somewhat a feeling of hope that at the end of the day Libya is going to be a free and democratic society,” said Abuzgaya, who has lived and worked in Canada since 1984.

Bengezi, who moved to Canada in 1995, wants his countrymen in Libya to experience what he knows of this land.
“I love Canada. And I wish that one day I would see my country like Canada. . . . Democracy, freedom, respect, everything.”