Waiting: Mohammed Abu Amra.
Photo: ED O'Loughlin
Ed O'Loughlin, Gaza December 22, 2007
SEVEN-MONTH-OLD Mohammed Abu Amra has been confined to Gaza's main children's hospital for four weeks now, suffering from suspected cystic fibrosis and immune deficiency.
The hospital has run out of the drugs needed to treat the persistent high fever and the strained, painful breaths which convulse his thin ribcage at almost twice the healthy rate per minute.
Fearing for his life, his doctors applied late last month for permission to transfer him to a hospital in Israel, but this week his family was still waiting to find out if the Israeli Government would allow him to leave the Gaza Strip.
"Because of the Israeli siege, the number of patients who can travel now is very limited," said Dr Ahmed Shakat, a pediatrician at al-Nasser hospital.
"In the past it took one day to transfer an urgent patient to Israel. Now I need maybe five days, maybe 10, if it happens at all. The Israelis say it's because of security, but it means urgent cases can die. In the past we could have transferred him also to Egypt, but now that border is completely closed because of the siege."
Mahmoud Daher, Gaza chief of the World Health Organisation, says that Palestinian infighting and Israel's blockade are preventing ordinary Gazans from receiving advanced medical treatment.
A WHO report released late last month said that since Hamas' takeover of the strip last June, only 100 of the 782 Gaza patients who sought treatment in Israel or abroad were granted permission to pass through Israel's Erez crossing.
Of those 100 patients, 27 arrived at the crossing only to be refused passage following interrogation by Israeli authorities. Seven died in Gaza hospitals while waiting for permits to be issued and four died at the crossing itself after their passage was blocked or delayed.
The Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights and Israel's second best-selling newspaper, Maariv, have claimed that the country's Shin Bet security service tried to recruit patients — or, in the case of children, their parents — as informers by denying them passage if they did not agree to collaborate. According to the WHO, by October this year 20% of vital drugs and almost a third of medical supplies were no longer available in Gaza, while 11 out of 18 publicly prescribed psychiatric drugs had run out two months earlier.
Shortages of spare parts and supplies as well as the difficulty in sending staff for training abroad have shut down a third of the Gaza Strip's 69 kidney dialysis machines, forcing renal units to reduce treatments. The death rate for newborns has increased from 5.6% in the first 10 months of 2006 to 6.9% in the same period in 2007.
In Gaza and the occupied West Bank, politicians and doctors blame the crisis on Israel's blockade, but the WHO says it is not that simple.
According to Mr Daher the WHO, which with the World Bank sponsors most of the Palestinian
health service's essential drugs, has little difficulty in getting its consignments through Israeli security.
Instead he points to bureaucratic failings among international donors and inefficiency and infighting in the Palestinian Authority itself.
Hamas won elections for the Palestinian Parliament in January last year, sparking a western-backed Israeli blockade which bankrupted the already ramshackle authority-in-waiting.
Things got even worse for Gaza this June, after Hamas defeated forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, prompting Israel to shut off the Gaza Strip's exports and block all imports to its 1.5 million inhabitants except basic food and "humanitarian" supplies.
At the same time, Israel eased its economic boycott of Mr Abbas' rump Government in the West Bank.
But thanks to years of mismanagement by Fatah's corrupt inner circle, even in the West Bank the Palestinian health service is in decline.
"There are shortages in the West Bank as well, but the difference is that in the West Bank you have relative freedom to move about to seek drugs and treatment … but the Gaza Strip is hermetically sealed off from the outside world," says Mr Daher.
MY BIG REQUEST:
To KNOW people will die if no action is taken and to silently sit, wait and watch is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY!!!
PLEASE bombard the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, the Foreing Minister's Office and the Defense Minister's Office with your protest letters!
SHOW that you care, SHOW that you have dignity, compassion and a HEART! This baby together with COUNTLESS INNOCENT SICK PEOPLE STUCK IN GAZA didn't commit any crime, didn't incite any violence nor hatred, didn't call for suicide bombing, the reason always cited by the Israeli defense establishment ... THEY DESPERATELY NEED YOUR/OUR HELP!!!
Cystic fibrosis is a mutation of a gene and kills if untreated ... in particular tiny infants like little Mohammed Abu Amra! They suffer terribly, have severe breathing problems, are mainly doomed to inactivity thus can't play like healthy children do ... and in late stage the only - and very drastic - chance for help will be a lung transplant! I am an RN ... I have witnessed it more than once.
CALL or WRITE to:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:
Telephone: 011(from USA) -972 (for Israel) - 2 - 670 - 5555
FAX: 011-972-2-566-4838
e-mail: pm_eng@it.pmo.gov.il
Foreign Minister Zipi Livni :
Telephone: 011(from USA) -972 (for Israel) - 2 - 530 - 5319
FAX: 011-972-2 -530 -3704
e-mail: sar@mofa.gov.il
Minister of Defense Ehud Barak :
Telephone: 011(from USA) - 972(for Israel) - 3 - 697 - 6663
FAX: 011-972-3 - 697 - 6218
e-mail: sar@mod.gov.il
Little Mohammad, his family and SO MANY OTHERS will thank you from all their hearts!!
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