Project's Concept
I started hearing news reports about a pandemic that was spreading rapidly in a remote Chinese city called Wuhan. Although scientists could not identify its features, I did not expect that this disease would spread so fast that we would soon have COVID-19 cases in our area. During my work as a nurse, I witnessed a large number of incoming cases at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem. The coronavirus has been spreading panic both inside the hospital and all around the world.
In the beginning, we had very little information about how the virus was spreading. This encouraged us to take additional precautionary measures to protect ourselves. However, we failed several times in saving infected persons from death due to multiple organ failure caused by the disease. We also had to face a few unknown and difficult challenges inside our hospital unit. I personally witnessed the most strenuous medical cases in that period.
إلCOVID-19 was so severe that we had to keep patients away from their families, even in the hours of their death (unfortunately).
I remember myself watching the events unfolding around me a few weeks after receiving the first COVID-19 case at the hospital. That was when I suddenly had the idea of documenting the developments inside the hospital. Since that moment, I have always had my camera with me throughout my work shift, to the extent that my colleagues started calling me “the camera guy.” It became a habit to have my camera with me at the ICU. In moments of escapism from horrendous reality, I resort to taking pictures as a way to disconnect from the moment. I would then remove the camera from my hands and quickly return to the framework it captured to treat patients effectively.
I sometimes wonder whether it is possible to avoid the losses of this pandemic, knowing that our current information about the virus is likely insufficient. We are still in a critical situation even after having developed vaccines. I also wonder why we think about solving a problem after it has gone out of control instead of using proactive efforts to create a healthy environment that does not give room for such a pandemic in the first place.
A photographer who lives and works in Jerusalem. He is currently working on obtaining a master’s degree in public health from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Masalha acquired a special talent in photography and developed these skills on his own. He also works as a specialised nurse in Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem at the ICU for patients infected with COVID-19.