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Decades later, the doctor who fought to save the life of Princess Diana following the horrific car crash, has shared his account with the world for the first time.
Then-33, Dr MonSef Dahman, who was working at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at the time, said in a new interview that he was ‘marked for life’ after he was unable to save the late Princess of Wales.
The royal was tragically killed in a car crash at the age of 36, on August 31, 1997, alongside her boyfriend Dodi Fayed.
The doctor, now 56, was a duty general surgeon at the time and while talking to the Daily Mail, he said that the night staff at the hospital did everything they could to save Diana’s life.
“For any doctor, any surgeon, it is of very great importance to be faced with such a young woman who is in this condition. But of course even more so if she is a princess,” said the doctor.
Diana was treated for hours by medics, including one of France’s best heart surgeons, Professor Alain Paive.
“We fought hard, we tried a lot, really an awful lot. We could not save her. And that affected us very much,” he continued.
The doctor went on to reveal that the team gave up at 4:00am and pronounced her dead.
He said that during the procedure, his shoes got Diana’s blood on them and while he was heading back home the next day, a man had said he wanted to buy them from him as they had “royal blood” on them.
Dr Dahman refused and washed off the stains as soon as he could.
“The thought that you have lost an important person for whom you cared, marks you all your life,” he recalled.
“When it’s a princess and you follow her funeral along with billions of other people, and you had tried to save her, that obviously marks you. It marks you all your life. Because it’s so terrible that this beautiful person had such a tragic end,” he added.