{"id":154161,"date":"2025-09-23T00:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T00:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/154161\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T00:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T00:37:08","slug":"fiona-stanley-ashamed-after-hospital-bearing-her-name-cancelled-event-featuring-palestinian-australian-doctors-western-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/154161\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiona Stanley \u2018ashamed\u2019 after hospital bearing her name cancelled event featuring Palestinian Australian doctors | Western Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Distinguished epidemiologist Prof Fiona Stanley said she was \u201cdeeply sad\u201d and \u201cashamed\u201d after the Fremantle hospital that bears her name abruptly cancelled a 2024 event featuring Palestinian Australian doctors speaking about their experiences in Gaza<\/a>, and even thought about telling the institution to remove her name.<\/p>\n

Guardian Australia can reveal the Fiona Stanley hospital invited two Australian doctors with Palestinian heritage, Dr Lama Al Ramahi and Dr Mohammed Mustafa<\/a>, to speak on the \u201cprofound challenges faced by medical professionals delivering health care in Gaza\u201d in September 2024.<\/p>\n

But the event was cancelled on the day it was due to take place.<\/p>\n

The revelations come after Melbourne\u2019s Royal children\u2019s hospital cancelled a planned panel discussion<\/a> about the effects of war on children\u2019s health earlier this month, just days after its chief executive received a letter alleging the event would pose a risk to Jewish staff and patients. It is not known whether the letter was directly connected to the decision and RCH refused to comment on how many complaints it received about the event.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

The Fiona Stanley hospital\u2019s education department extended the invitation to Al Ramahi and Mustafa after they gave a well-received talk on their firsthand experiences of a medical mission to Gaza at an event put on by healthcare groups at the State Library of Western Australia<\/a> on 6 September last year.<\/p>\n

The hospital\u2019s event was part of its weekly educational and professional development staff meetings, known as grand rounds. Titled \u201cOutside the Comfort Zone\u201d, it was described as \u201ca Special Topic Grand Round that delves into the complexities of delivering care in challenging environments\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mustafa, a high-profile emergency physician<\/a> who was recently the subject of an episode of Australian Story, told Guardian Australia his talk \u201cwas going to be medically based\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout how mass casualty events are dealt with in Gaza, where there\u2019s no triage, there\u2019s no functioning medical equipment \u2026 not only a medical dilemma but an ethical dilemma as well. And that\u2019s why it was an important conversation to have,\u201d Mustafa said.<\/p>\n

But the day before the talk was due to take place, Mustafa says the hospital executive progressively restricted the scope of the topic. In correspondence seen by Guardian Australia, Mustafa was told the scheduled talk needed to avoid any mention of Israel or the Israel Defense Forces and that it was not a political forum.<\/p>\n

The format of the event was also changed changed from a panel featuring the two doctors to a pre-prepared Q&A with Mustafa only.<\/p>\n

Al Ramahi told Guardian Australia she was cut out of the event after attending the hospital premises the day before to set up, when a member of the hospital executive asked to see her presentation.<\/p>\n

Al Ramahi said she felt \u201cambushed\u201d and \u201clike I\u2019d been interrogated\u201d as over two hours, the executive objected to \u201cmost if not all\u201d of her proposed content, including statistics, clinical and contextual documentary materials from Gaza, and a photo of her medical colleagues in Jordan in front of an aid organisation banner.<\/p>\n

She sent completely reworked slides to the hospital that night, but received a text from the executive at 8.23am on the day of the planned talk telling her not to attend the talk. \u201cI was boiling from the inside,\u201d Al Ramahi said.<\/p>\n

Two hours later, as Mustafa was arriving at the hospital, the event was cancelled entirely. Mustafa said he was told this was due to fears hospital staff might get so upset they would be unable to adequately and safely perform their duties afterwards.<\/p>\n

Prof Fiona Stanley, a renowned public health activist<\/a>, said she was approached directly by hospital staff distressed about the event\u2019s cancellation. She has no formal relationship with her namesake hospital but often advocates to it directly.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n

Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had been lobbying about the children and the families of Gaza for months and months before this cancellation,\u201d Stanley told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt sick in my stomach [when I was told] \u2026 I was even thinking at the time of saying, \u2018take the name away\u2019. I mean, what do I stand for? I stand for humanity, particularly for children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Stanley said she contacted the hospital, saying: \u201cThis is totally unacceptable. I am very angry about this and I want you to reinstate the grand round.\u201d She received assurances the event would be reinstated but \u201cnothing has happened\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just deeply, deeply sad. And I\u2019m ashamed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for South Metropolitan Health<\/a> Service, which manages the Fiona Stanley hospital, said in a statement: \u201cThe grand round scheduled for September 2024 was intended to be a discussion of the challenges clinicians face providing care in extreme environments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was considered by the health service executive that the content of the presentation was beyond what was intended for the grand round\u2019s purpose as a medical education forum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mustafa noted that five days earlier, Royal Perth hospital had hosted a talk by an Israeli surgeon, who spoke about the 7 October Hamas attacks as a mass casualty event and received significant sympathetic media coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am working as a doctor within [this system], and I\u2019m not allowed to talk because they said it was too political,\u201d Mustafa said. \u201cThere is a huge disparity here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Distinguished epidemiologist Prof Fiona Stanley said she was \u201cdeeply sad\u201d and \u201cashamed\u201d after the Fremantle hospital that bears…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-154161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}