A Hospital Turning Twenty Should Not Be Good News
Amman, Jordan – July 2026
I have a friend here in Amman. His name is Hayato.
One day, over a coffee, he told me about the hospital where he worked.
“Ciro, this hospital is different.”
I asked him what he meant.
He told me about a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières, a place that has been treating people wounded by war for twenty years.
“You should come and see it. You should document it.”
So I did.
Twenty years
A hospital turning twenty should be good news.
But this is a different kind of anniversary.
The hospital in Amman specialises in reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation for people injured by war. Over the years, patients have arrived from Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Gaza.
They come with burns, amputations, complex fractures, injuries caused by bullets, explosions and collapsing buildings.
Some stay for months.
Surgery is only the beginning. Rehabilitation, physiotherapy, prosthetics, psychological support and social assistance are all part of the long process of rebuilding a life.
Walking through the hospital, I realised that the real story was not the technology, the operating rooms or the numbers.
It was the people.
Gaza
In recent years, the hospital has also received patients evacuated from Gaza.
People who have survived the war arrive in Jordan carrying injuries that are sometimes visible and sometimes impossible to see.
One of them was Taysir.
He was eighteen years old.
He had arrived from Gaza after an attack in which members of his family were killed. He had suffered severe burns and needed specialised treatment that was not available to him in Gaza.
When I met him, he had already been in Amman for several months.
He was still undergoing treatment.
He told me that his condition was improving.
He smiled when he spoke.
I remember that smile.
Behind the camera
I have been working as a journalist and documentary filmmaker for many years.
I have filmed stories about migration, displacement, war and social issues in different parts of the world. I have learned how to enter difficult places, how to listen, how to ask questions and, sometimes, how to remain silent.
But experience does not make you immune.
When I started filming Taysir, my hands were shaking.
I noticed it.
I tried to control them.
I couldn't.
For a moment I thought that perhaps, after all these years, I should have been able to remain completely detached. To do my job, record the images and move on.
But I realised that this was not a failure.
Sometimes the body understands something before the mind does.
You can know how to use a camera. You can know how to conduct an interview. You can know how to tell a story.
And still, sometimes, your hands shake.
More than surgery
The hospital is also a place of extraordinary medical and technological work.
Doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists, engineers and technicians work together to help patients recover as much independence as possible.
The hospital also uses 3D technology to create prosthetics, surgical models, guides and other solutions adapted to individual patients.
Technology can make a difference.
But technology alone cannot explain what happens inside this place.
What I saw was a long process of helping people recover something that war had taken from them.
A movement.
A possibility.
A little independence.
Sometimes simply the confidence to look at their own body again.
Why is it still necessary?
When I left the hospital, I went back to my car.
I sat down, opened the windows and stayed there for a while.
I kept thinking about Taysir.
About his age.
About what he had already lived through.
About the fact that he was eighteen.
And about the strange sentence that had brought me there in the first place:
A hospital turning twenty should be good news.
But it isn't.
Not completely.
Because the fact that this hospital has been needed for twenty years also means that, for twenty years, people have continued to suffer injuries that require this kind of specialised care.
Wars have continued.
People have continued to flee.
Civilians have continued to be injured.
And hospitals like this one have continued to be necessary.
Perhaps the best anniversary gift would be for this hospital to become unnecessary.
For there to be no more children to treat after bombings.
No more young people arriving with bodies changed forever by war.
No more families waiting for medical evacuation.
Until then, the people working here continue to do something incredibly important: they try to give their patients back a future.
I left the hospital with my camera, my photographs and my notes.
But I also left with something that cannot be photographed.
The feeling that sometimes the most important part of documenting a story is not what you manage to record.
It is what you carry with you when you leave.
Read the original Italian article published by Il Gazzettino Vesuviano:
Un ospedale che compie vent’anni non dovrebbe essere una buona notizia
Words & photographs by Ciro Scuotto
Amman, Jordan – 2026
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