Registration Open for the 2024 BRISMES Annual Lecture

Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a British-Palestinian Plastic & Reconstructive Surgeon. He completed his medical education at the University of Glasgow and his postgraduate residency training in London. He later underwent 3 fellowships: Paediatric Craniofacial Surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Kids (GOS); Cleft Surgery at GOS and a further fellowship in Trauma Reconstruction at the Royal London Hospital. In 2011 he was recruited by the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC). In 2012 he became Head of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the AUBMC, Clinical Lead of its Pediatric War Injuries program and War Injuries Multidisciplinary Clinic. In 2015, he co-founded and became director of the Conflict Medicine Program at the Global Health Institute at the American University of Beirut. 

He returned to the UK in 2020 and continues in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the private sector. He is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College University of London and Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Conflict & Health Research Group at King's College London. He is Clinical Lead for the Operational Trauma Initiative at the World Health Organization’s EMRO Office and serves on the board of directors of INARA, a charity dedicated to providing reconstructive surgery to war injured children in the Middle East, and previously on the Board of Trustees of Medical Aid for Palestinians. He serves on the UK’s National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) International Funding Committee. He has published extensively on the health consequences of prolonged conflict and on war injuries, including a medical textbook, “Reconstructing the War Injured Patient” and “Treating the War Injured Child.” He has worked as a war surgeon in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, South Lebanon, during the previous 4 wars in the Gaza Strip and is currently working in Lebanon.

On the 9th of October 2023, he entered the Gaza Strip and worked in Shifa Hospital and then Al-Ahli-Baptist Hospital for 43 days during the current genocide. The evidence he provided was part of the South African submission to the International Court of Justice. In April 2024 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the American University of Beirut, where he is currently Professor of Conflict Medicine. His work has been featured by numerous newspapers and media outlets, notably Le Monde, The Independent, The Telegraph, BBC and CNN.