Australian television host Waleed Aly's surgeon brother has delivered an impassioned plea to the unvaccinated from inside a Melbourne Covid ward, giving insight into what can await those who catch the disease and have not been vaccinated.
Dr Ahmad Aly is a general surgeon at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and released this video to social media via his sister-in-law, Waleed Aly's wife Susan Carland.
Carland tweeted that her brother-in-law "is desperately worried by what, and who, he is seeing at his hospital."
The video earned a retweet from Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, who asked the public to "please listen" to Dr Aly's plea.
In the video, Dr Aly visits the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) and hears first-hand accounts from doctors treating Covid patients.
One doctor reveals he's treating 13 Covid patients in ICU, many of them on ventilators – and all unvaccinated. He says they've had zero vaccinated patients in ICU.
"With normal ICU patients, a day or two is standard – some of these patients will be with us for three or four weeks, it's that serious.
"After a critical illness of that severity… the legacy lasts the rest of your life. The impacts stay with you for decades. People are never quite the same as they were before."
Dr Ahmad Aly: "Without your help, I think we're lost." Photo / Supplied
The doctor said he'd "never seen so many fairly young people in ICU, all with the one problem, all of whom are at a high risk of dying".
"The message is really clear," says Dr Aly. "They're young, they're not vaccinated, they're all from our community. If you are vaccinated, you may get Covid – but you don't end up here. You don't get sick."
Dr Aly finished with a plea to "community leaders" to encourage the vaccine-hesitant: "You have to tell our community to get vaccinated. Take the courage of the prophets, of the Sahaba. Stand up for what is actually right. because you can save lives, you can make the difference here. Without your help, I think we're lost. Honestly, this is what I've seen today."
Waleed Aly and Susan Carland. Photo / Damian Shaw
In 2018, Dr Susan Carland playfully dubbed her husband "the underachiever of his family" when sharing another of her brother-in-law's health messages on social media.
Waleed had this to say of his brother, who is 10 years his senior, in a 2015 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald: "When I hear people say what a remarkable surgeon he is, I feel weird because that is not who he is to me. Yet I am not surprised, because his life from the start has been about excellence and determination. Everything he does is worthy of pride in some way."
In the same interview, Ahmad said that "growing up, Waleed was always 'Ahmad's little brother'. Now I've become 'Waleed's brother'. When I see him on TV, I still see my little brother, as he doesn't behave any differently. I certainly don't see him as a 'celebrity'."
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