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Page last updated
May 15, 2008
Understanding the conflict
Health
page under construction
A: Campaiging organisations in Israel-Palestine
A: Organisations
a) Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
Physicians For Human Rights-Israel was founded in 1988 with the goal of struggling for human rights, in particular the right to health, in Israel and the Occupied Territories
The role of the Israel and World Medical Associations
A letter by Hadas Ziv on behalf of PRH-I, published in the Lancet in 2003.Behind Closed Doors: The Role of the Israeli General Security Service in Preventing Medical Treatment for Palestinian Patients
Report published October 2006Report: Harm to Children in Gaza
Published November 2006Gaza: Access of Patients to Medical Care
Published April 2008b) The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP)
A Palestinian non-governmental, non-profit organization established in 1990 to provide comprehensive community mental health services - therapy, training and research - to the population of the Gaza Strip.
Since that time, the Gaza Strip - one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with two thirds of the population being refugees and 50% being younger than 16 years - has witnessed extreme forms of violence and suffering, due to Israeli occupation and military operations. This made the extent of mental health problems in the Gaza reach unprecedented levels.
B: Publications and debates
4. Palestinians: The Crisis in Medical Care
Richard Horton
New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 4, March 15, 2007
'In a survey completed by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, over 90 percent of children below the age of eleven experience severe anxiety, nightmares, and physical expressions of stress, such as bed-wetting. Half fear that their parents will not be able to provide essential family necessities, such as food and a home. Forty percent have relatives who died during the second intifada, which began in 2000...
...During the past twelve months, the health systems in Gaza and the West Bank have begun to disintegrate rapidly.'
3. Pregnant Palestinians give birth at Israeli checkpoints
68 Palestinian women give birth at Israeli checkpoints results in 34 miscarriages, four women deaths.
GAZA CITY - A report by the Palestinian Ministry of Health says that pregnant Palestinian women are often prevented by Israeli forces from reaching hospitals to receive appropriate medical attention, causing many miscarriages and the deaths of some women...
2. Medical ethics, the Israeli Medical Association, and the state of the World Medical Association
'Persistent concerns have been raised about the role of the World Medical Association (WMA), the international watch-dog on medical ethics, in respect of their approach to the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) in particular...' wrote Derek Summerfield in the letter below which triggered off a robust debate in the British Medical Journal in 2003. the main contributions are as follows:
Letter from Derek Summerfield
BMJ 2003;327:561 (6 September)IMA president's response to open letter to the BMA
BMJ 2003;327:1107 (8 November),Reply from the BMA
BMJ 2003;327:561-562 (6 September)Author's response to allegation and to BMA
BMJ 2003;327:1107-1108 (8 November)See also the articles on 'Dual Loyalties: The Core Problem', 'Prisoners in isolation and the ethical dilemma involved', 'Torture', 'Shackling', 'Information on medical confidentiality and human rights' and 'Doctors in the Public Health System' in the Medical Ethics and Human Rights section of the Physicians for Human Rights - Israel website.
1. Health in Israeli occupied territories R Mazali
BMJ, Jan 1994; 308: 137A 1994 letter on behalf of Association of Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights alluding to chronic shortcomings in the provision of medical services in the occupied Gaza - long before the collapse of the peace process.
