Palestinian
Health Care
Conditions Under Occupation
By Sonia Nettnin
11 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Members
of the Ibdaa Health Committee are on tour in the US. They are educating
Americans on the devastating health conditions of Palestinians and health
care workers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
The facts on the ground are
shocking, yet the international community ignores Israel’s widespread
violence and warfare against the Palestinians. The violence against
health care workers, the health care system and the Palestinian infrastructure
are equally appalling.
According to the Palestinian
Ministry of Health, 36 health care workers have been killed, 447 health
providers have been wounded and 129 patients have died at Israeli checkpoints.
How? There have been 375 attacks on health care centers, 383 attacks
on ambulances, with 38 ambulances destroyed altogether.
Palestinian women in labor
have not been left out of the equation of military occupation. Since
September 28, 2000, at least 67 women have given birth at Israeli checkpoints.
As a result, 39 newborns died or they were delivered stillborn.
According to a map from the
Applied Research Institute Jerusalem there are over 100 established
checkpoints throughout the West Bank, an area totaling 5,970 sq. km,
and this figure does not include flying checkpoints and barriers, such
as roadblocks, razed roads, dirt mounds, etc. When Israel completes
construction of the wall, approximately 33 per cent of villages within
the West Bank will be denied “…free and open access to their
health care system,” per the IHC. Moreover, 81 per cent “…of
people living in isolated zones and enclaves cannot access primary health
clinics, medical centers, and hospitals as needed.”
There are instances where
Palestinians need access to urgent medical care, but Israeli forces
will not allow Palestinian ambulances to cross the checkpoint. When
this happens Palestinians are forced to transfer to an Israeli ambulance,
which costs anywhere from 350 New Israeli Shekels (NIS) – 650
NIS ($80 USD – 150 USD). Keep in mind that an estimated 50 per
cent of Palestinians in the West Bank live below the poverty line ($2
USD per person/day). The average unemployment rate for Palestinians
in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza combined is over 60 per cent.
In essence, the Israeli occupation has created business opportunities
from Palestinians in need of urgent medical care that already impoverishes
Palestinian families who struggle to meet their daily needs.
A Palestinian Central Bureau
of Statistics (PCBS) survey about the effects of Israeli measures on
the economic conditions of Palestinian families found that 86 per cent
of households decreased their spending for food. Moreover, over 66 per
cent of households surveyed decreased their expenditures for health
care. Some demographic factors for consideration are that 46 per cent
of Palestinian families are 14 years of age or younger and 18 per cent
of these families have children who are under four years of age (PCBS
– 2005 population results).
Another dimension to this
grim picture is that the IHC found there has been a decline in the quantity
and quality of food in 73 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza. A recent
example is the 2006 closing of Karni Crossing (Al-Mintar), which has
resulted in severe shortages in food, such as flour and rice. Since
Palestinians can not export their goods, such as peppers, tomatoes and
carnations to Europe, it has resulted in losses compounding into millions
of dollars thereby crippling the Palestinian economy. For the few days
Israeli forces opened the crossing, it operated at 10 per cent capacity.
In the West Bank 83 per cent of Palestinian families have difficulty
accessing local and commodity markets because of the wall.
Although US media reports
explanatory reasons behind IDF operations (they are targeting “terrorists,”),
the US news fails to report that the occupation and its ramifications
target Palestinian youth, along with the civil and governmental infrastructure
they live in.
An online daily news source
is Ma’an News Agency, which provides up-to-the-minute news coverage
of the Holy Land.
Ibdaa Health Committee
Members of the IHC toured
the US to increase public awareness on the Palestinian health care situation.
They asked for American cooperation and collaboration in future endeavors
within the health care system.
Basically, they asked people
to hold fundraisers and foundations to consider funding medical equipment,
medicines, patient, and child sponsorship. Also they asked for physicians,
nurses, psychologists, social workers, sociologists, healthcare professionals,
mental healthcare professionals, and medical students interested in
volunteering their time and expertise to help with medical services
and training within the Palestinian health care system.
The IHC focused on Dheisheh
Refugee camp, located outside of Bethlehem because the members grew
up in this area. IHC members are volunteers who formed the committee
to safeguard public health and improve the overall health care situation.
Some of the IHC’s objectives are to provide a long-term, health
educational program, establish a psycho-social program, provide a nutritional
counseling program, establish a diabetes and education treatment center,
establish an ophthalmology center to provide eye examinations, corrective
treatment and prevention and establish a child abuse prevention center.
With regards to the 6,000
children living in Dheisheh over 95 per cent of the camp’s children
suffer from psycho-social problems. Although several hundred children
screened were diagnosed with poor vision, over 60 per cent came from
families who could not afford to pay for eyeglasses. These examples
represent some of the effects occupation has on children.
One of the members shared
that allegedly some of Israel’s canned food sold in Palestinian
markets contains high levels of E211, also known as sodium benzoate.
In the US the FDA regulates that products with sodium benzoate must
contain less than .1 per cent. High levels of E211 in preserved food
can potentially affect peoples’ health and has raised moderate
concern from this US research group http://www.inchem.org/documents/cicads/cicads/cicad26.htm
Since further research is needed, opportunities exist for both Israeli
and Palestinian medical and scientific researchers, as well as the international
community to collaborate on future endeavors for this important public
health situation.
A logical response might
be that people should buy fresh food instead of preserved food. The
problem is how do Palestinians access unreachable markets and jobs under
occupation and where do money trees grow so people can pay for it?
For the Palestinian farmers
who still have olive and citrus orchards Israeli bulldozers have uprooted
over one million trees over the last 39 years as they continue colonizing
Palestinian land.
For Palestinians, access
to clean water is a crisis and here is why it exists.
There are over four million Palestinians living in the West Bank and
Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has 23 hospitals and 799 hospital
beds for the entire population. There are .71 nurses for every hospital
bed.
Although the IHC came to
share the needs of Dheisheh and its 13,000 residents, this refugee camp
represents the 59 refugee camps across the West Bank and Gaza that have
the same needs for medical and office equipment and supplies. Here is
additional information about the challenges facing the Palestinian health
care system from Jerusalem.
More information can be found
at http://www.dheisheh-ibdaa.net
and their US Coordinator can be reached at [email protected].
The Arabic word “Ibdaa”
means “to create something out of nothing.”
Sonia Nettnin writes about social, political, economic,
and cultural issues. Her focus is the Middle East.