Charissa Iluore

PGY-2 @PennsyIM / @StanfordAnes | @Harvard @UniofOxford @Penn Alum | Interested in palliative care, chronic pain, and global health

[Charissa Iluore @ciluore]

M.D. Complete ✅👩🏾‍⚕️

Filled with awe and gratitude for my family, friends, mentors, and patients who gave me the opportunity to make my dreams come true!

#WhatADoctorLooksLike

[Mohammad @MargBarAmerica]

how can a society be so cartoonishly evil man

[꧁✿Nessa✿꧂ @Softnessa_]

Thinking about the time my baby was in the ER and had a med student checking his ears.

I said "good job buddy" (to my kid) and the med student said "thank you, it's been a long day."

I'm glad it maybe helped.

[Haboon @Harooni117]

@netanyahu Add it to the list

[Brandon Stanton @humansofny]

“We had one chance to leave Gaza, early in the war. At that time our lives had grown very difficult. We’d been displaced. We sat down and had a family discussion, and the consensus in the family was not to leave. We’d just learned that our house was still standing, so we thought: ‘We’re luckier than others.’ One month later the Philadelphi corridor was closed, and the option to leave was exhausted. But we still thought we would be OK. We thought the war would end soon, as we think now, as we thought a year ago, as we thought two years ago. And at least we were together. Our family has always been extremely close. I care for my patients, I care for my friends, but not the way I care for my family. Especially my mother. All people say that their mother is a saint, but she was actually a saint. She hated no one. She loved everyone. When I was a child she worked as a schoolteacher, and her school was next to mine, so in the mornings we would walk to school together. I don’t know why I remember this—but she’d always walk between me and the sun. So that I could stand in her shadow. It’s a simple memory, but it means a lot to me. I was always the most attached to her. Maybe everyone in our family feels the same way, but this is my feeling. I told jokes only for her, so that she would laugh. I specialized in medicine just to make her happy. I was a resilient teenager. I wanted to be a writer. But she confronted me. She told me: ‘Life on Earth is a short journey, and you should help people. Because we believe in God. And we believe there is more than just this life.’ Everything, all the things I have done, I have done to please her. And I let her down. I let her down. Because it was my decision. Three days before she was killed, I evacuated her to a safer place. And the safer place got bombed.”
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Dr. Mohammad Kullab graduated from Al Quds University as a doctor in 2019. He’s worked at Nasser Hospital and the European Gaza Hospital. At the outbreak of the war, he had just returned to Gaza from a clinical attachment in the UK with the intention of returning. His passport was in transit to be certified when it was lost in the action and he was unable to leave. He joined Doctors Without Borders in the beginning of 2024, where he now works as a medical doctor. Dr Kullab’s job is to deal with patients directly and coordinate their care across various specialists.
Dr. Kullab’s story is part of a series featuring the Palestinian staff of @MSF_USA in Gaza. I will be sharing these stories over the next several days.

[Séamus Malekafzali @Seamus_Malek]

Can't stop thinking about how emaciated this doctor looked in Anas al-Sharif's last report from Gaza City. Starving doctors trying to save the lives of starving infants.

[Brandon Stanton @humansofny]

“When I entered Gaza the Israeli military had a rule: I was only allowed to bring in three kilos of food. As I was weighing out protein bars, trying to get under the limit, I said to my husband: ‘How sinister is this?’ I’m a humanitarian aid worker. Why would there even be a limit on food? I’ve worked in many places with extreme hunger, but what’s so jarring in this context is how cruel it is, how deliberate. I was in Gaza for two months; there’s no way to describe the horror of what’s happening. And I say this as a pediatric ICU doctor who sees children die as part of my work. Among our own staff we have doctors and nurses who are trying to treat patients while hungry, exhausted. They’re living in tents. Some of them have lost fifteen, twenty members of their families. In the hospital there are kids maimed by airstrikes: missing arms, missing legs, third degree burns. Often there’s not enough pain medication. But the children are not screaming about the pain, they’re screaming: ‘I’m hungry! I’m hungry!” I hate to only focus on the kids, because nobody should be starving. But the kids, it just haunts you in a different way. When my two months were finished, I didn’t want to leave. It’s a feeling I haven’t experienced in nearly twenty years of humanitarian assignments. But I felt ashamed. Ashamed to leave my Palestinian colleagues, who were some of the most beautiful and compassionate people that I’ve ever met. I was ashamed as an American, as a human being, that we’ve been unable to stop something that is so clearly a genocide. I remember when our bus pulled out of the buffer zone. Out the window on one side I could see Rafah, which was nothing but rubble. On the other side was lush, green Israel. When we exited the gate, the first thing I saw was a group of Israeli soldiers, sitting at a table, eating lunch. I’ve never felt so nauseous seeing a table full of food.”

-------------------------------------------------------

Aqsa Durrani is a pediatric doctor and board member of Doctors Without Borders USA, with nearly twenty years of experience in humanitarian projects. During our interview Aqsa repeatedly expressed a desire to center the voices of her Palestinian colleagues. To this end I’ve spent the past week collecting stories from the Palestinian staff of Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. I will be sharing these stories over the next several days. I’m so grateful for the time that these people gave me; they were sleepless, hungry, traumatized, and often working 24-hour shifts. Because of the unreliable internet connection their images are sometimes grainy. Their words, however, will be crystal clear.

[أنس الشريف Anas Al-Sharif @AnasAlSharif0]

This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.

Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.

I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.

I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed.

I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.

I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards.

I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in Allah, and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith.

I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah Almighty. If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what is with Allah is better and everlasting.

O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family. Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it.

Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.

Anas Jamal Al-Sharif
06.04.2025

This is what our beloved Anas requested to be published upon his martyrdom.

[Michael Justus @mhjrad]

“patient is stable, nothing to do overnight”

patient at 3am:

[Charissa Iluore @ciluore]

@action_ap Sorry! How about now?

[Fatima Mohammed @fatima__m7md]

Today, I’m thinking of Dr. Amira Alasooli running to rescue an injured Palestinian man under the fire of israeli snipers. These are the women we celebrate today and every day. These are our heroes and role models. Happy International Women’s Day.

[Charissa Iluore @ciluore]

@William46676045 Happy birthday!! 🤗

[Wyatt Reed @wyattreed13]

Young victim of Israel’s pager attack tells Iraqi TV “I was playing on my phone at home. I heard the pager ring, I didn't know that sound. I grabbed it, and I barely had time to press OK before it exploded”

When Biden officials make pager jokes, this is what they’re laughing at:

[Ross Prager @ross_prager]

(1/x) Intubating a critically ill patients is the most dangerous procedure we do in the ICU (3.1% cardiac arrest rate) not because of hypoxia or tube placement, but hemodynamic collapse 🫀

(Russotto et al. JAMA 2021)

A 🧵on making high risk hemodynamic intubations as safe as possible.

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

How are we all supposed to just sit and pretend it’s normal and fine that Israel bombed every hospital in Gaza and is now moving on to bomb hospitals in Lebanon?

I feel insane. How is the world allowing this war on medics? How can we watch this happen again? How?

[Sabreen /صبرىن @dakhterakhter]

My pager has been on my hip when I carried my children in my arms, when I bent over a child to sew a cut on her face, when I hugged a colleague, when I was pregnant. It’s been in the hands of my daughter as she played with the buttons & in a bag next to my son in the car.