Categorie archief: Zorg / Health

Fighting systematic medical neglect: Palestinian prisoners call for international action

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

 

 Fighting systematic medical neglect: Palestinian prisoners call for international action

“On day 67 of my hunger strike I was transferred to al Jalameh interrogation centre and tortured. I was forced to stay in stress positions, naked, and I was badly beaten. I consequently went into a coma.”

Mohammed al Taj, aged 41, is visibly weak and speaks faintly, taking breaks to catch his breath after every few sentences. He suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and heart hypertrophy, and is in a stable condition in the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah, where he has been since his release from prison on 18 April 2013. Behind the headboard of his bed, a kafiyya and a Palestinian flag hang on the wall, and a dozen family and friends are gathered to give him a hero’s welcome.

Al Taj went on a 77-day hunger strike just over a year ago to protest against the medical neglect he faced in prison in Israel. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2003 and first complained of breathing difficulties in 2004 after being “subjected to various types of torture, including poisonous gas, beatings and prolonged exposure to the sun,” which he believes are responsible for his lung condition. He says he received no treatment for years until his condition rapidly deteriorated. After years of complaining about his condition, he did not have a CT scan until 2010 – after which the prison authorities reported that the results “were lost”. He says that he has never received the promised appropriate treatment, in violation of his rights under international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Dr Ruchama Marton is the founder and director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHR-I). The organisation acts to safeguard prisoners’ rights to diagnosis, medical care and suitable conditions of imprisonment. She says that medical neglect within the prison system is very common for Palestinian prisoners.

“It is very hard for a Palestinian prisoner to get a good medical examination and diagnosis,” says Dr Marton. This is partly due to prison doctors having the most basic level of medical training. “To get the right treatment after getting the right diagnosis is even harder,” she adds. “Prisoners can complain for a very long period of time before a doctor will see them, and then it’s not guaranteed that the doctor will really examine them and give them the correct diagnosis.”

Most Palestinian patients in Israeli jails are simply given pain killers rather than proper treatment, she says.

Al Taj’s early release on medical grounds – he had served two-thirds of his sentence – is rare.

“When they told me that I would be released, I figured I would be ‘Martyr number 208′ as Israel doesn’t release prisoners unless they’ve finished their sentence or are about to die,” al Taj says.

Fifty-four Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons have died from medical negligence, and 207 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli jails since 1967, according to the Palestinian Authority.

Al Taj regards Shimon Peres’s ‘Presidential pardon’ as nothing more than a continuation of the prison service’s refusal to give adequate medical treatment. “I was only released because they didn’t want to give me a lung transplant, they refused to pay for it.” He also believes that Israel did not want another Palestinian patient dying in custody, following the widespread, angry protests that filled streets in the West Bank and Gaza after the death of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh in March. Abu Hamdiyeh, whose death was attributed to medical negligence, died in custody in an Israeli hospital from advanced cancer of the throat and spinal column.

Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organisation that advocates for Palestinian prisoners’ rights, says that a key problem behind the systematic policy of medical negligence by the Israeli Prison Service is that “doctors and other medical staff employed by the IPS find themselves in a situation of ‘dual loyalty’, whereby their primary obligation is towards the State and the Israeli security apparatus, rather than the patient.”

Addameer and PHR-I say Israeli medical doctors and psychiatrists employed by the prison authorities are complicit in medical negligence, ill-treatment and torture and physical and mental abuse, ‘for fear of losing their jobs’.

Dr Marton says that PHR-I has been campaigning with no success to change the very foundations of this system so that doctors and medical staff will instead be employed by the Ministry of Health, thereby granting them greater professional freedom.

With more and more Palestinian prisoners reporting systematic medical neglect in Israeli prisons, and with many turning to hunger strikes to demand their rights, al Taj, speaking to MAP, calls on the British public to intervene.

“We need our issue to be raised internationally. We need people in Britain to deliver this message to their governments as we are in a vulnerable situation and need international support to pressure the Israeli government to end the occupation and to respect the Geneva Convention and prisoners’ rights. We hope that the British public will continue their support and campaigns of raising awareness, but also to come here to witness our situation and our cause directly, and to report what they see, and to raise our issue on a global level.”

(Source / 13.05.2013)

Israeli doctors who betray their training

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

From the prison guards and from Shin Bet personnel nobody expects any measure of compassion or humanity. But where are the doctors?

They studied medicine. Perhaps their parents pushed them to be doctors or perhaps they had a burning desire to enter this profession from the time they were children. They certainly thought about a career but they also thought about the sanctity of this profession, about the noble aspiration to save lives and cure the sick. They certainly read the Hippocratic Oath, which is a very moving document. In the oath’s Hebrew version, which was composed by Prof. Lipman Halpern in 1952, they also swore that they would “help all sick people irrespective of whether they are strangers, or Gentiles, or humiliated citizens, or respected ones.”

They studied medicine in Jerusalem, in Moscow, in Budapest and in Odessa. They dreamed of a career but, in the end, they found themselves working as physicians in the Israel Prison Service or in the Shin Bet security service, although even there they had no reason to be ashamed of their profession. Some of them certainly encountered the case of Maysara Abuhamdieh, a prisoner who was serving a life sentence. In August 2012, Abuhamdieh complained of sharp pains in his throat. Only after six months (!) − that is, only last February − was he diagnosed as suffering from cancer of the esophagus. Only after two additional months had already elapsed − that is, on March 30 − was it decided that he would be hospitalized in Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva. He died two weeks later.

During those critical months, his desperate family appealed to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel: Their beloved Maysara could barely speak any more because of the pain and they shuddered to consider the possibility that he might not receive proper medical care. A month ago, a representative of that organization submitted to the prison service’s top medical officer, Chief Superintendent Dr. Liav Goldstein, the urgent request that the prisoner receive medical treatment. Goldstein did not even bother to reply.

Israel’s 2001 law governing the early release of prisoners authorizes the prison service’s parole board to arrange for the early release of a prisoner whose days are numbered. In this case, the board operated at an appallingly slow pace. When asked to explain this week why Abuhamdieh, who was obviously dying, was not released early, Commissioner Nazim Sabiti, commander of the prison service’s southern district, simply stated that a meeting of the board was indeed held on the subject of the prisoner’s release.

All this transpired under the supposedly watchful eye of physicians who had taken the Hippocratic Oath. These same physicians allow the hospitalization of prisoners who are hand- and foot-cuffed even when in serious condition, as was the case with Abuhamdieh.

These same physicians saw the situation of another prisoner, Zuheir Lubada, whose kidneys and liver were diseased and who was dying. Lubada was released from prison only after he had slipped into a comma and was in serious condition; he died a week later. These same physicians enable the scandalous practice of solitary confinement for months and even years on end, despite the report of the Israeli Medical Association’s ethics committee that has categorically stated that this practice inflicts irreversible physical and emotional damage on inmates.

These same physicians saw how Ben Zygier was placed in solitary confinement and they saw the results of the torture he underwent during his interrogations by the Shin Bet. They saw all this and said nothing. They saw and they gave their authorization, despite the regulations of their own ethics committee, according to which: “Any physician who has witnessed an interrogation or torture carried out in contravention of international conventions shall report the contravention to the appropriate authorities.” Have we heard any mention of even one physician who reported improper procedures, who screamed to high heaven, who issued a warning or who even resigned in the face of such a contravention of international conventions? “This is the cancer of the occupation.” That is the diagnosis of a physician, MK Dr. Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List – Ta’al), who wrote that sentence this week on his Twitter page in response to the death of Maysara Abuhamdieh, who finally succumbed to cancer. Like Zygier, Abuhamdieh was Prisoner X; few people knew of his disease, and it is doubtful whether he was given the medical treatment he deserved as a human being. Granted, the prison guards saw and said nothing, and the Shin Bet delayed Abuhamdieh’s early release from prison so he could at least die surrounded by the members of his family. From the prison guards and from Shin Bet personnel nobody expects any measure of compassion or humanity. But where were the doctors?

Next time Israel sends a medical team to a disaster area overseas and its physicians work hard to extend medical care to the victims of that disaster, one must not forget their colleagues, the physicians who say nothing, who close their eyes, who do not provide necessary medical attention − here in Israel, in the prisons and in the interrogation rooms. They are also physicians and they also once signed the Hippocratic Oath.

(Mail / 16.04.2013)

1,000 sick prisoners including 25 cancer patients in Israeli jails

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

RAMALLAH, (PIC)– The head of the Follow up committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, Amin Shauhan, confirmed that more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners suffer different illnesses including 25 cancer patients.


The prisoners face deliberate medical neglect by the Israeli prison services aiming to assassinate them as what happened with the martyr Ashraf Abu Dra’a, Arafat Jaradat and Maysara Abu Hamdiya, he added.

He pointed out that the occupation procrastinates in dealing with the hunger striker Samer al-Issawi’s demands after failing in his deportation to European countries.

Shauhan called on all international institutions and human rights organizations to bear their responsibility towards the prisoners’ issue especially the hunger strikers.

(Facebook / 16.04.2013)

Experts probe reach of toxins from West Bank landfill

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

School children walk past the carcass of a sheep near the Bedouin village Wadi Abu Hindi near Abu Dis in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, March 3, 2013.

 

WADI ABU HINDI, West Bank (Ma’an) — “They drank from the dark water, and then they died,” a Bedouin shepherd boy says of the putrid black liquid oozing from the ground.

Half a mile to the east, insects are devouring the carcasses of two animals – one sheep and a goat – rotting in a dry riverbed.

From the level of decomposition, it’s clear they died recently. What isn’t so clear is how, but a new environmental survey is turning up clues about toxins in the air and water here.

The area, Wadi Abu Hindi, is downstream from the busiest commercial waste site in the occupied West Bank, in a valley overshadowed on both sides by Israeli settlements.

The “dark water” is leachate, liquid produced by compression. Here, it refers to runoff from hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage crammed into a hilltop east of Jerusalem. Rainfall washes it down the less stable eastern slope, where it meets freshwater streams.

“This is very dangerous,” says Nader al-Khateeb, a sanitation expert and former chief engineer for the Bethlehem water authority, after reviewing photographs of the site for Ma’an. “It is highly, highly toxic. It could easily percolate into the groundwater,” al-Khateeb says.

He and other experts believe the liquid’s presence in the valley reflects one of several engineering failures at the Abu Dis landfill, an Israeli dump site that processes trash from both sides of the Green Line.

So great is the threat that in 2011, Israeli authorities declared the facility unsalvageable and ordered it shuttered by 2013. Yet it remains a hive of activity today, blasting untreated methane into the air and runoff into the water of the valley below.

Amer Marei, a hydrogeologist at Al-Quds University, is leading the first comprehensive study on the environmental effects of these toxins on nearby residential areas.

Initial findings show carcinogen levels in both the water and the air that exceed World Health Organization standards and reach populations never previously thought to be at risk.

“If I am categorizing the problem, the biggest is air pollution,” Marei said Sunday during a visit to the site.

“Toxic gases emitted in the atmosphere, known as TVOCs, reach a maximum of 440 micrograms per cubic meter (of air)” in samples from Abu Dis, al-Ezariya and al-Sawahira al-Sharqiya. “At a rate of 1 microgram … six per million would be expected to contract leukemia. So, multiply that by 440.”

The findings are new, and they have not been replicated outside Marei’s lab. But he says the team’s soil, air and water samples are being preserved for independent analysis, which he welcomes.

And experts uninvolved in the research say the findings fit with the facility’s history of mismanagement by a company based in Maale Adumim settlement. The site was not prepared to host a landfill when construction began decades ago, and it lacks basic safeguards like concrete and asphalt.

Officials at Israel’s environmental protection ministry told Ma’an this week that they intend to eventually shut down the facility, citing similar safety and health concerns.

“The dump in Abu Dis causes serious environmental harm,” according to a September 2012 assessment by the ministry made available Thursday in an email.

The statement acknowledged that the facility’s infrastructure “is not designed to prevent land pollution, and there are concerns that the groundwater might be polluted.”

But it offered no firm timetable for closing it down, and a spokesman was unable to produce one. He referred inquiries to Israel’s Jerusalem municipality, which was told to stop using the site by this month. A spokeswoman declined to confirm if the municipality was cooperating.

Slideshow: Landfill threat to water in Bedouin village

Marei is hesitant to discuss the conflict with Israel, but he finds the lack of urgency troubling from an environmental perspective.

“My question for them is would they allow such a site to be built inside Israel? And would they let the situation that we see happening here happen there? I don’t think they would.”

Nader al-Khateeb is the director and co-founder of a Palestinian environmental group that promotes coexistence with Israel, but he too has little patience for the internal political wrangling that permits the facility to continue operating when all involved are aware of the risks.

“Things get lost between who’s responsible and who’s not responsible. In the end, who pays the price? It is the Palestinian residents who are the victims,” he says.

“The occupier should not use the occupied’s land as a dumping site for their garbage.”

Even though the site is in Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank under full control of the Israeli military, both experts faulted the PA for its lack of attention to the crisis.

“The Palestinian environmental protection agency needs to take its responsibility in bringing the issue of this problem to the public and to the international community,” says Marei.

Al-Khateeb agrees: “We are not doing enough within our rights under international law and taking such cases to international courts to stop such practices.”

A spokesman for the Palestinian environmental protection agency did not return calls but a day after Ma’an TV raised the issue, health ministry vehicles were seen driving into Wadi Abu Hindi.

http://youtu.be/-yCWhk2N098

Like all visitors, they were greeted first by an uncovered reservoir the size of a swimming pool and filled with liquid collected from the landfill’s eastern side.

During rainstorms, this tank sometimes overflows into a riverbed and toward the Bedouin encampment. With enough rain, it can reach streams leading to the Jordan River.

Some residents of the Bedouin area find employment with the landfill, and they aren’t eager to talk on the record about the site’s environmental footprint.

Away from the cameras, though, one father expressed fears about the polluted stream’s effects on the community, particularly on the health of his young children.

“When it rains, it becomes like a blood river,” he said, pointing toward the valley.

(Source / 10.03.2013)

Going on hunger strike strains body’s organs

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

Body cannot function without calories

Dubai: Hunger strikes can go on for months — Palestinian hunger striker Samer Issawi has gone without food for 222 days so far but each day a person goes without normal nourishment places further strain on the intricate and finely tuned body organs and systems that keep a person alive.

Dr Gwynne Jones, a critical care physician in Ottawa said that any effects on body tissue will extend beyond fat stores. Muscle and lean body mass, “the bits of the body that do the actual work,” Jones says, are also being broken down.

The average person needs about 1,200 calories a day to keep organs functioning, the brain active, the heart beating and basic growth functions going, says registered dietitian Jennifer Sygo of Cleveland Clinic Canada in Toronto.

“It certainly depends on age, gender, the amount of muscle a person has … their size. Bigger people tend to have higher metabolisms than smaller people,” she said.

Beyond that basic caloric requirement, you need another 30 per cent to look after the activities of daily living — everything from brushing your teeth to walking around.

“We can liberate fat stores… the fat that we naturally have around our organs, the fat we have under our skin, those are useful stores because we are built to be able to handle feast and famine to a certain degree,” she said.

But that comes at a cost to well-being over time. With no glucose coming in, the body launches into a state called ketosis.

“In effect, what that is, is converting fats into a sugar-type by-product that the body can use for basic fuel because glucose is what fuels our brain and it’s what fuels any type of quick activity, if we had to run away from a fire or something like that,” Sygo said.

The body converts the fats into basic units of energy called ketones, a process that, among other things, can lead to bad breath.

“One of the ketones that is naturally produced by the body is called acetone, and if you know the smell of nail polish remover you have an idea of what acetone smells like,” Sygo said.

That could happen within a couple of days of beginning a hunger strike.

Some people, Sygo said, willingly enter a ketotic state for weight control, and there are people who talk about successfully managing their health through ketosis.

How long a person can subsist on the limited intake of a hunger striker can’t be predicted and depends on many factors, including the person’s physical condition at the beginning of the strike.

“Their nutrient status to begin with would have a significant role to play,” she said. “If they were well-nourished and in good health they could sustain it longer.”

Hunger strikers over the years have had various approaches to their actions. IRA prisoner Bobby Sands took salt and water before his death

66 days after beginning his strike in 1981. Nasrin Sotoudeh, an imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer, drank water mixed with salts and sugars before ending a 49-day hunger strike in December, the New York Times reported.

Fluids critical

Fluids are critical to maintaining life. In general terms, the human body can go without water for two to three days. A lack of fluid causes problems with kidney function within just a few days, particularly if a person is active.

Inside the body of someone on a hunger strike, many other changes will occur over time.

“You could become anaemic,” Dr Ewan Affleck, a Yukon emergency care specialist said..

Chronic diarrhoea is possible because the bowel loses its ability to function through a lack of essential minerals and nutrients needed for digestion.

Signs of deficiency, particularly of protein, could emerge throughout the body.

“Over time you might start to see things like the skin becoming more brittle and eventually you might see red sores or cracking of the skin, especially around the hands,” Sygo said.

“Hair might start to break. Nails might start to break. Those would all be signs of protein deficiency as well as other nutrients that would be associated with protein like zinc.”

If a person chooses to end a hunger strike, it’s not simply a matter of deciding to eat a big steak dinner in celebration — in fact, doing that could pose a significant danger to a body that has become accustomed to virtually no nutritional intake and which is lacking the necessary enzymes in the gut for digestion.

“You start very gradually,” Sygo said.

Often, that could begin through intravenous feeding.

Affleck says there is a risk of permanent damage from a hunger strike in the long run.

In extreme cases, there could be permanent organ damage. However, Affleck said, “the body is resilient.”

(Source / 10.03.2013)

WHO report: Israeli health access barriers

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

 

 WHO report: Israeli health access barriers

Accessing vital medical care for millions of Palestinians in occupied Palestine is often contingent upon getting Israeli permission to travel to hospitals or through checkpoints. Each year, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza need to apply for Israeli-issued permits to attend hospitals for diagnosis and treatment. In emergencies, Palestinian ambulances invariably have to stop at a checkpoint, then shuttle the patient to an Israeli ambulance on the other side of the checkpoint, in what is termed a ‘back-to-back’ transfer. Patient dignity aside, such delays and external control have meant the difference between life and death for Palestinian patients, and breach basic human rights and international humanitarian and human rights law, according to a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO).

‘Right to health: Barriers to health access in the occupied Palestinian territory, 2011 and 2012′ details the figures and extent of movement restrictions imposed by Israel upon Palestinian patients who require access to specialised health referral facilities within occupied Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Israel. In 2012, the Palestinian Ministry of Health referred 33,469 patients from the West Bank (24,385) and Gaza (9,084) to specialist hospitals that required Israeli-issued travel permits. Over 75% of these were to access the six Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem that offer specialised health services (with another 5% to other Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank), 15% for Israeli hospitals, and 5% for hospitals in Jordan and Egypt.

In the West Bank, 222,188 applications for health access permits were made by residents in 2012 – these included patients (first and subsequent appointments), patient-companions (to accompany children, the elderly and infirm) and family members looking to visit patients. A fifth of this total were either denied (17.6%) or were approved after the appointment (2.7%), meaning the appointment was missed. Out of the 8,628 patients from Gaza in 2012, 92.5% had their permits approved – 0.9% were denied and 6.6% were approved too late.

The report notes that access for vulnerable groups – children, patients with physical disabilities, the infirm, patients requiring donors, Gaza patients aged 18-40 and patients with a ‘security file’ – is particularly difficult. Access for children, for instance, depends on a ‘first degree’ companion, usually a parent or sibling, being approved for a permit; if the companion is not issued a permit, the child misses the appointment.

The WHO report states that “obtaining a permit is complicated and difficult, and the uncertainty and last-minute nature of the Israeli response makes the process more stressful for patients and their families’. It can be very burdensome, the report adds, noting that the process can be expensive, with many patients and family members having to travel to apply for permits and to attend ‘security’ interviews. The permit process lacks transparency and is inconsistent, the report says, with no clear criteria for approval or denial of permits. For those denied a permit, there is no right of appeal. Applicants with a ‘security file’ are never told by the Israeli authorities what the security issue concerns, and the report adds that it is likely that many patients requiring specialised medical attention who are possible high ‘security’ candidates – namely, men aged between 18-40 from Gaza – do not bother applying for Israeli access permits and either fail to get the medical care they need or access it in Egypt via the Rafah crossing. The report adds that patients who are denied permits or who do not receive a response ‘may suffer deterioration of their health and wellbeing as a result of the delay in needed specialised treatment’. It notes that six Gaza patients died while waiting for health access permits in 2011 and presents a number of case studies throughout the report.

The report also highlights other issues that adversely affect healthcare for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, including restrictions on continuing training for medical professionals, restrictions on work permits for healthcare workers from the West Bank who work at Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, and drug and disposable shortages due to the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis.

Tony Laurance, Head of the WHO oPt office in Jerusalem and incoming MAP CEO, said: ‘As Occupying Power, Israel is the main duty bearer under international humanitarian law and human rights law to provide humanitarian access at all times for persons needing heath care,’ adding that the WHO hopes that the report will be used to improve health access for Palestinians.

An abstract of the study based on preliminary findings was published by The Lancet last October as part of the MAP-supported The Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance conference. MAP is also supporting the next The Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance conference, which is convening in Cairo later this month.

(Source / 08.03.2013)

Medical mission to help teen who lost leg in Syrian fighting

Geplaatst door door
Reageer
Playing pool is one of Mohammed Jammous’ favorite pastimes. Jammous, who was hurt in the Syrian civil war, will receive a prosthetic leg.

Mohammed Jammous wanted to be a teacher until an artillery shell killed a close friend and led to an above-the knee amputation of his left leg.

Now, the 14-year-old Syrian hopes to become a doctor who treats child amputees.

Mohammed learned a little about that career Thursday when he had his first appointment with a surgeon at Texas Orthopedic Hospital.

The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund identified Mohammed and Fatima Asafar, an 18-year-old woman from the West Bank, as needing surgery not available in their home countries and arranged to treat them in Houston this month.

The child-focused nonprofit organizes medical missions to the Middle East and arranges for American and European physicians to donate services not available locally. Hatim Kahyyal, a volunteer with the local chapter, said the group provides free surgeries for about 4,500 kids a year.

“That’s not nearly enough,” Kahyyal said.

Antiquated care

Dr. Gary Brock and prosthetist David Baty will fit Mohammed with a prosthetic, determining Thursday he won’t need major surgery to mold his stump.

Dr. Gregory Stocks, who traveled to the West Bank last summer on a mission with the relief fund organization, will perform hip replacement surgery Friday on Fatima. She was born with a dislocated hip that causes constant pain and has ground an inch of bone off her right leg.

Dr. Gary Brock holds his first consultation with translator Duha Ayish and Mohammed Jammous, 14.

“There’s not the equipment or expertise,” Stocks said of the West Bank. Although the doctors he met are dedicated, he said their techniques and equipment compare to 1980s American care.

As their doctors were interviewed, Mohammed and Fatima laughed and spoke in Arabic about canceled flights on their way to Texas.

Fatima, who understands and speaks a little English, tried not to cry as a relief volunteer rubbed her back and Stocks spoke about her initial fear that the surgery would prevent her from having children; gratefully, she was told it wouldn’t.

“I’m looking forward to not living with the pain,” Fatima said through a translator.

As she walked out of the conference, she repeatedly said in English, “Thank you.”

Revolt ‘had to happen’

Sitting on a couch in the Memorial area of Houston, Mohammed described the day he lost his leg, speaking through his host, real estate developer Bassam Bazari.

Mohammed and other Syrians who had lined up for bread at a bakery ran to a bunker when fighting broke out one August day. He and two friends thought they had eluded danger when the streets went quiet.

As they left, though, it started again, and he was among the 12 injured.

Because of the fighting, it took his family a day to leave Da’el, just nine miles north of Daraa where the civil war started in 2011. It took another day to travel the 20 miles south to the Jordanian border, where military forces gathered. Three days after Mohammed was hit, a bad infection forced physicians at the Za’atari refugee camp to amputate the teen’s leg.

In the first 11 months of the Syrian civil war, 500 children had been killed and another 400 tortured or sexually abused after arrest, according to a United Nations Children Fund estimate from February 2012.

Pausing before he continued speaking, Mohammed played with the fringe on a Syrian flag draped over his shoulder, an emblem of the flag pinned to the other.

“The revolution had to happen because the regime was very oppressive,” Mohammed said. The teen is glad about the push for democracy despite everything that’s happened to him, his family and friends.

Mohammed said he’s thankful for his host family and their offer to enroll him in school once he knows how long he will stay for physical therapy. The teen has missed more than a year of studies because of the fighting, which has damaged schools and forced many families to hide inside their homes all day.

“There’s no electricity and nothing to do,” he said. “It’s constant fear and sadness.”

Smiling, Mohammed said he’s eager to continue school, but for now has enjoyed living a normal life again.

(Source / 01.03.2013)

British surgeons carry out first organ transplants in Gaza

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

Volunteer medical team from Royal Liverpool hospital to train local staff at beleaguered Shifa hospital

Ziad Matouk Gaza transplant

Ziad Matouk, 42, had a kidney donated by his wife, Nadia, 36.

A team of British surgeons has carried out Gaza‘s first organ transplants as a pilot for a long-term plan to train local medical staff to perform the operations.

Two patients underwent kidney transplants at the Shifa, Gaza’s biggest public hospital, which is beset by overcrowding, chronic power cuts and shortages of drugs and equipment. The operations were conducted a fortnight ago by a volunteer medical team from the Royal Liverpool hospital.

“I cannot express my happiness,” said Ziad Matouk, 42, who was born with one kidney and was diagnosed with renal failure several years ago. “I’m proud to have had one of the first transplant operations in Gaza. I want to hug and kiss all the doctors.”

Matouk, whose wife donated one of her kidneys, hopes to return to his job as a falafel vendor in Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza, within six months. The couple had sought a transplant in Cairo, but were rejected as unsuitable at a state hospital and could not afford the fee at a private hospital. “We were desperate,” said Matouk.

The UK-Gaza link-up began about a year ago after Abdelkader Hammad, a doctor at the Royal Liverpool hospital, was contacted by an anaesthetist at the Shifa, who outlined the difficulties the Gaza hospital was facing with dialysis. The Shifa is forced to rely on generators because of daily power cuts; spare parts for its ageing dialysis machines have been difficult to import; and supplies of consumables, such as blood lines, filters and saline, are often scarce. Israel heavily restricted imports to Gaza between 2007 and 2010, and continues to control the flow of goods in and out of the Palestinian enclave.

About 500 patients, including 40 children, need dialysis two or three times a week, according to the Shifa.

After an exploratory trip last April, Hammad – whose family is Palestinian – and three colleagues from Liverpool arrived in Gaza via Egypt last month, bringing specialist equipment.

Two patients were selected for surgery. The first, Mohammed Duhair, 42, received a kidney donated by his younger brother in a six-hour operation. He was anxious about the surgery, but was reassured after talking to the British team. “I hope my life will now be normal,” said Duhair, himself a family doctor in Rafah.

Two days later, Matouk underwent a transplant after his wife, Nadia, 36, was found to be a good match. She said it was her “fate and destiny” to donate a kidney to her husband of 20 years.

The surgery was carried out by the British team, assisted by doctors and nurses from the Shifa. “We are very satisfied with the results,” said Sobhi Skaik, head of surgery at the Gaza hospital. “For the patients, it means that their lives are no longer dependent on machines. Both the surgeons and the patients’ families are very happy.”

Skaik hopes that Gaza medical teams will eventually carry out kidney transplants independently, and that other organ transplants may follow. The Shifa is working with the Gaza ministry of health on a plan to train its doctors, surgeons, nursing staff and laboratory technicians in transplant surgery at the Royal Liverpool.

“Funding is a problem,” said Hammad. “In the meantime we will go back as volunteers to Gaza for the next couple of years to do more transplants.” The Liverpool team’s next visit is scheduled for May.

For Hammad, the visit to Gaza had an emotional as well as professional dimension. His Palestinian family was originally from Jaffa, now part of Israel, but became refugees in the 1948 war. Hammad was born in Iraq and lived in Jordan before moving to the UK 25 years ago. His visit to Gaza last April was the first time he had stepped foot on Palestinian soil.

“There are many problems in Gaza – power cuts, shortages of medication. People there can’t make choices the same way that people can elsewhere,” he said. “It was emotional for me to be able to help the people in Gaza and make life a little bit better for them. I felt proud.”

(Source / 09.02.2013)

Help Maria to get her treatment and continue to live

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

In the Gaza Strip, like everywhere in the world, the number of cancer patients is increasing. If compared to other countries, the difference is that it’s not easy to get required medicine inside the Strip and in most cases people cannot afford to buy them due to the big percentage of poverty.

20130128082752-20121019_163822

One of the cases is Maria Shoaib, a 13 years old girl from the middle of Gaza. She is a smart little girl, with a big mind and optimistic soul. Maria started to feel sick about 4 years ago. Her parents took her to the hospital in Gaza but due to the situation in the Ministry of health – Gaza is so critical because the blockade and siege which have been imposed by Israel in 2005/2006 –  the doctors advised her to go to Egypt.

The doctors in Egypt made her a CT- Scan. The results showed a tumor in the left optic nerve. The size of the malignant cell was 2.5 cm and it was going to metastasize more. Maria started to lose her vision by the time and the doctors prescribed her immediately oral chemotherapy.

The medicine she is using are:

1-  Temodal 100mg (Temozolomide ) each box contains 5 capsules.

2-  Zofran 8mg (Ondansetron Hydrochloride) each box contains 10 tablets.

She started taking Temodal 100mg with the dose 3 capsules/week and  Zofran 8mg 2 tab/week.

So she needed 2 ½  boxes of Temodal and one box of Zofran per month.

Her parents started to search for the medicines in private pharmacies but they found out that are too expensive. Her father decided to sell his car and some other stuff from the house to be able to cover the expenses for the medicines since his salary wasn’t enough to cover the daily life expenses.

In that time I got a phone call from her dad asking me for help. Someone suggested me as a link because I’m a pharmacist and have contacts with different medical drug stores.

I started to work hard to find it out asking organizations in and outside the Gaza Strip for help. Then I started to make urgent calls to all my friends across the world to donate money and to help this way to buy the medicines. Luckily I got some funds which were enough to cover the cost of the drugs for a few months. Some other friends managed to send this expensive medicine directly from their country.

A couple of months ago Maria went again to Egypt for another check up. The results were  amazingly changed. The tumor’s size reduced from 2.5 to 1.5 cm and hopefully it will reduce more and disappear. Since the medicine worked well for her, the doctors decided to let her  continue with them for 3 more months but with an increased dose.

The new doses are:

Temodal 100mg 4 capsules/week and Zofran 8mg 4 tablets/week. In total it’s 9 ½ boxes of Temodal and 5 boxes of Zofran for 3 months.

After these 3 months she will have another check up in Cairo. We all hope that the Cancer will disappared forever.

I’ve been helping Maria for a year and a half (with a big support by my friends) and she became part of the family. It is hard to see a child suffering where general life conditions are also difficult. If you consider her as your daughter or sister you will always do what you can to help her survive. This can only happen if all of us work united to reach the goal and supply her with the very expensive medicine necessary for the treatment. Make a difference, help her now. Please make a donation, any amount is most appreciated.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can’t donate, we understand, but please share this link with your friends, be it by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, etc.

Funds Raised Above Goal and Extra money.

Any funding raised for Maria that exceeds the total amount of the medicines and our goals will be used to bring the medicine to Gaza, help Maria and her family for the daily expenses and  hers and her brothers education . Thanks again for your generosity and support for Maria, as it motivates her even more to stay happy.

For any Questions you are so welcomed to email me on drelmalihi@gmail.com

Much love

Dr.Hani Siliman Salamah

(www.indiegogo.com / 05.02.2013)

Doelstellingen en activiteiten Stichting Kifaia

Geplaatst door door
Reageer

 

  • Training en professionele ondersteuning van beroepskrachten en vrijwilligers in de Gazastrook
  • Fondsenwerving in Nederland
  • Bemiddelen tussen NCCR en Nederlandse en internationale donororganisaties
  • Voorlichting geven in Nederland over de Palestijnse situatie in het algemeen, en die van gehandicapten in het bijzonder

Vanaf het begin van de tweede intifada, herfst 2000, hebben we ons vooral ingezet voor het nieuw opgerichte Gaza Home Care Program, dat als belangrijkste doel heeft het verstrekken van thuiszorg aan kinderen en jongeren die in de intifada gewond en gehandicapt zijn geraakt en aan chronisch zieken. Wat klein begon, met zo’n 50 kinderen en hun families als doelgroep, is inmiddels een volwassen organisatie die meer dan drieduizend patiënten onder zijn hoede heeft. Een deel van hen zijn ‘lichte’ gevallen, dat wil zeggen kinderen en jongeren die na eerste opvang en hulp (zoals fysiotherapie, of het krijgen van hulpmiddelen als krukken en kunstledematen) voldoende mobiel zijn om zonder thuiszorg door te kunnen, maar het zwaartepunt ligt bij de patiënten die hun hele leven zorg aan huis nodig hebben. Daartoe worden ze niet alleen bezocht door de hulpverleners, hun familieleden worden ook getraind om de zorg zoveel mogelijk zelf te kunnen geven. Ongeveer de helft van de gehandicapten die verzorgd worden zijn intifada-slachtoffers, gewond geraakt door kogels van scherpschutters, door schoten van tanks, bij de bombardementen of de verwoesting van huizen.

In de Gazastrook is een redelijke gezondheidszorg aanwezig op het vlak van ‘cure’, dat wil zeggen genezing, maar er is vrijwel niets op het vlak van ‘care’, de zorg voor lichamelijk en geestelijk welzijn, de preventie van (vaak levensbedreigende) complicaties als doorligwonden en infecties, en het streven naar een zo goed mogelijke bestaanskwaliteit voor diegenen die moeten leren leven met een ernstige beperking. Daaronder valt ook de emotionele aandacht voor de vaak traumatische gevolgen van de voortdurende bedreiging onder een steeds harder wordende bezetting.

Naast de directe zorg voor de ca. drieduizend mensen met een handicap stelt het NCCR zich als doel om gehandicapten te ‘rehabiliteren’ in de breedste zin van het woord. Het doel is om ervoor te zorgen dat ook mensen met een beperking zo volledig mogelijk deel kunnen nemen aan de samenleving. Dat ze naar school kunnen gaan, dat ze werk kunnen krijgen, dat ze ook in leidende posities zichtbaar zijn. Dat betekent dat er ook actie wordt gevoerd voor een brede mentaliteitsverandering in Gaza, gericht op alle instituties: de ministeries, de community leaders, het onderwijs en de media. Het NCCR doet veel aan lobbywerk en jaarlijks demonstreren de gehandicapten met hun families voor hun rechten.

Ook de emancipatie van vrouwen is een speerpunt. Na het tweejarige project om vrouwen met een handicap uit hun isolement en onzichtbaarheid te halen, is het percentage vrouwelijke cliënten van het NCCR gestegen van 20% naar 45%.

(www.kifaia.nl / 02.02.2013)