Dr Samer Attar

It's not often I post about stuff like this but every so often something just stops you in your tracks and really touches you. Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Samer Attar lives and works in Chicago but has made several trips to Aleppo in Syria to work in the hospital there. The story he tells in this Radio 4 interview is truly humbling and deserves as wide an audience as possible. Unusually, they devoted half of the PM programme to it (the interview starts at the 24 minute mark).

I was driving in the car when I heard this. I had to pull into a car park and sit in the car to listen to the end of it. It was astounding radio.

There's also a short NPR clip here, and Alistair over on Twitter was kind enough to point me to the Desert Island Discs with surgeon Dr David Nott who is mentioned in the Attar interview.