Field hospital helps thousands

When evangelist Franklin Graham inspired the Convocation crowd Oct. 10 to use their education for Christ and to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, he spoke from experience. 

Graham, the president and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse International, went to what seemed like the end of the earth last year when he and his team went to Mosul, Iraq, and set up an Emergency Field Hospital outside the war-torn city.

In the Plains of Nineveh, a suburb of Mosul, Samaritan’s Purse Emergency Field Hospital staff served faithfully for nine months, from Christmas Day 2016 to September 2017, during the greatest war Mosul had seen in
generations. 

“The stress of war is incredible,” Graham said. 

The Iraqi government, aided by international forces, pushed 30,000 soldiers into Mosul to retake the city from the 6,000 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters. While the attack was against ISIS, the civilian population of Mosul took the brunt of the war. The Associated Press reported that between 9,000 and 11,000 civilian lives were lost in the Battle of Mosul (Oct. 2016-July 2017).

There were 5,700 ISIS causalities.

The hospital, built to U.S. military standards, treated over 4,000 civilian patients, mostly children and those who were used as ISIS’s human shields. 

“I wanted these Muslims to know there is a God who loves them,”
Graham said. 

After Convocation, Graham and his long-time friend President Jerry Falwell toured the Emergency Field Hospital that Samaritan’s Purse set up on Liberty’s Academic Lawn. This was the first time Samaritan’s Purse had taken the hospital to a college campus. 

The hospital on the Academic Lawn was open to the public, and the staff who served the Mosul community last year guided tours.  

Graham praised the staff and how they handled the war in Iraq. He said they endured with no breaks through 24/7 war.  

“For these nurses to pick up these children, to love them, to kiss them, to smile at them — my hat goes off to the nurses,” Graham said. 

The Emergency Field Hospital was a safe haven for those who had been shot trying to flee Mosul, as well as chemical warfare victims and bombing survivors.  

“The wailing and the screaming of the women and the children is something that will never leave your ears,” Graham said. 

Located 11 miles outside Mosul, the hospital took a month to build. The standard time frame for Emergency Field Hospitals to be built is 24 hours. 

The project was an enormous undertaking for Samaritan’s Purse. Graham said the officials feared bombers blowing up the hospital, so Samaritan’s Purse built a blast wall around the perimeter. ISIS poisoned the water sources in the area, forcing Samaritan’s Purse to dig a well. Electrical and plumbing systems also had to be installed. 

Graham’s motivator for getting doctors and nurses on the ground in Mosul was the gospel. 

“We love them that much, that we would leave the comfort of our homes to put their bodies back together,”
Graham said. 

As Graham stood and looked on the Emergency Field Hospital erected on Liberty’s campus, students lined up outside in the rain to get a chance to tour the hospital and meet the staff. 

“These students that you see lined up over here going through — that’s our future,” Graham said. 

Graham said he hopes to see a great population of Liberty alumni working at Samaritan’s Purse as nurses and doctors in the future. 

Samaritan’s Purse offers internships for a wide range of vocational interests. Applications for the spring have closed, but the summer internship program application is open. Applications close Jan. 1, 2019 and can be found at www.samaritanspurse.org/our-ministry/internship-program/.