Health impacts of the occupation: Children's Relief Bethlehem (CRB) and their patients

The occupation affects the people of the West Bank in a variety of ways. Checkpoints, house demolitions and the effects of the wall are all quite tangible manifestations of the occupation. However there are many other issues that remain less visible. Due to a crippled economy public health services in the West Bank are sparse and basic.  Of those that suffer due to this, the effects on the lives and health of children are perhaps the cruellest and most unfair. 

Unfortunately this is not a new situation. On Christmas Eve 1952, four years after the Nakba, Father Ernst Schnydrig is on his way to Mass in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, when he spots a person near a Palestinian Refugee Camp. A father buries his dead child in the mud. The man is devastated. Father Schnydrig wonders, "How can I celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, while children suffer at the same place he was born?" Moved by his experience, he establishes Caritas Baby hospital and his legacy is still alive today in Children's Relief Bethlehem (CRB).

A visit to their first class hospital facility in Bethlehem buoys the heart. It is deeply reassuring to see a place where children are treated with the utmost care and expertise in a land where Palestinian children are beaten and locked in jail for throwing a stone and sometimes for throwing nothing.

Lina Raheel is social worker with CRB. I accompany her on home visits to some isolated families some distance from Bethlehem who cannot afford private medical care for their children. In 2008 the hospital had approximately 220 such families on their books that Lina and her colleague visited. Lina explains how much of the health difficulties those Palestinian people face are occupation and poverty related. Lack of access of adequate water sees a rise in gastro related illness during the summer months and inadequate housing contributes to respiratory diseases. Most telling though is the stress of living under military occupation that weakens people's immune systems and leaves adults and children vulnerable to diseases such as diabetes and asthma.

Mohammed (3) has Cerebral Palsy. On his first admission to CRB's hospital Mohammed was suffering from malnutrition and he also needed significant medical treatment. Mohammed has difficulty holding his body upright and so cannot sit in a regular chair. However a supported chair would have cost his parents 1350 NIS, with the assistance of CRB they only had to pay 200 NIS. Lina is calling to Mohammed's family home to check on his health and to see how is managing in his new chair. The family live in a converted garage in the village of Sa'eer. Mohammed's mother Leila says, "Now with the chair and massage he can lift his head up more. Previously while he was on the ground he would stay in the one spot, now after massage he moves around more. The chair is working well but there are some small issues with it, which I am recording. There are many cases like Mohammed's in the area, there was a clinic in the area once every two months but now there is nothing."

Asma is a seven year old girl with Cystic Fibrois (CF), diabetes, epliepsy and asthma. Her father died recently leaving her with her mother and seven other siblings. CRB will provide a nebuliser and insulin machine but she needs to see a doctor soon in relation to the diabetes and pancreas issues. For the past three months the mother has not received any food support for the family – this is a result of food aid going to Gaza. Lina explains that

CF patients need protein: "This girl does not eat well however as they cannot afford meat. CF patients also can get depressed and loose their appetite. But Ikram is very resourceful mother and gets donations from various organisations. She has no income, she only gets basic service from social health insurance."

Ra'ouf is the youngest of 13 children and he and his nephew Mo'taz (5) are both deaf and mute. They live in a house in Yata with 16 other family members. Ra'ouf and Mo'taz have a kidney condition that requires medicine on a daily basis. CRB provides this medicine and hearing aids for the two boys. If they do not get this medicine their kidneys will fail. The government hospitals in the West Bank do not have the expertise to prepare this liquid medicine. Lina is encouraging Manal (Mo'taz's mother) to get him to use the hearing aid. She has not being using it due to a lack of batteries and because he does not like the aid in his ear. Lina explains to her that he will not benefit from the speech therapy at the school for deaf children when he registers in September if he is not using the hearing aid. She encourages the mother to get him used to the aid and explains that the batteries are very cheap. She explains that his aggressive behaviour is linked to his inability to communicate verbally.  

On the way back to the hospital Lina explains that "sometimes we have difficulty accessing our patients – the checkpoints especially flying ones delay and prevent access, Sometimes we have been waiting at checkpoints for two hours. We were once stopped by an army jeep and they were pointing guns at us ready to fire – it was a closed military area but there was no way of knowing this.There are other barriers such as bad roads and long distances to patients." She also says that because of unannounced IDF road closures, "the ways to the villages always change. You don't even know you can go back the way you came."

One of the other life saving services that CRB provided is a free medical card for children with chronic long-term illness who are living in extreme poverty. CRB is largely funded by international donors.

For more information on CRB see http://www.kinderhilfe-bethlehem.ch/en/