Healthcare for Palestinians

From the Director of International Public Relations - Emek Medical Center, Afula

It borders on the incomprehensible how the western, educated, cultured, democratic and ‘balanced’ world focuses its media-generated wrath against Israel.  Better to remember that no country on this earth is beyond constructive criticism, especially western super-power societies with dubious histories of their own.  But – let’s not go there.

As is our trademark, I want to share with you something positive so as to offer you a choice on what to focus … something positive and uplifting, instead of depressing negativity.     

Nivin was born in Ramallah (in the Palestinian Authority), married and now lives with her husband in East Jerusalem.  Her battle with breast cancer brought her into the sphere of Sonja Dinner, a Swiss-based international philanthropist who cares deeply about the plight of women in Arab societies.  Sonja is providing invaluable support for the creation of Emek’s Comprehensive Breast Care Center and decided to step out of the box and bring Nivin to Emek for a sensitive and necessary surgical procedure. 

Get the picture?  A Muslim Arab woman living in a society where such things are not even openly discussed, from an area that could be the flashpoint for another war, traveling through checkpoints with her Palestinian Muslim husband to Israel’s Emek Medical Center – the mecca of coexistence through medicine – to be treated by a team of Jewish & Arab Israeli physicians for a disease that women in her society suffer from in silence.

Nivin, her husband and Sonja met with Emek’s Professor Dan Hershko (Head of Surgery ‘B”) and Dr. Azziz Shoufani (Head of Plastic Surgery).  She was examined and later operated on in what proved to be a highly successful procedure.  With Sonja’s help and encouragement, Nivin is now a role model for other women in her society and is helping to break through Arab taboos surrounding this deadly disease.                  

  

Sonja Dinner (left) with Nivin in her East Jerusalem home

Expert medical attention (unavailable in the Palestinian healthcare network) was called for and they came to Israel, to Emek.  Another in a long line of Palestinians who have been saved here.

I’m proud to be living in a country where offering such help is the norm.  I’m even more proud of Emek’s humanitarian professionals who, through their fingers and hands flow the magic of healing and ultimate reconciliation. 

It is unsensational acts such as these that represent real hope.  Do you understand that?  

PA Acknowledges Cooperation with Israeli hospital

Official PA daily acknowledges
Israeli hospital's medical care
for Palestinian children and training of doctors

The official PA daily reported on a visit by the PA Minister of Health, Hani Abdeen, to Israel's Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. The daily noted that 30% of the child patients in Hadassah are Palestinians and that the Israeli hospital is training "60 Palestinian medical interns and specialist physicians who will be returning to the [Palestinian] Authority areas to carry out their work." The hospital has a special program to train Palestinian doctors to treat cancer among children, reported the PA daily.

The following is the report:
"[PA] Minister of Health, Hani Abdeen visited the Israeli Hadassah Hospital yesterday [May 5, 2013]. This is the first visit by a Palestinian minister to one of the most important Israeli hospitals, according to the hospital's announcement.

Minister Abdeen who was accompanied by a delegation that included senior officials of the ministry and of the PA, met with the Director of Ein Karem Hadassah Hospital, Yuval Weiss. He [the minister] visited Palestinian patients being treated in the hospital, and he distributed gifts. [Hospital director] Weiss said: 'We relate to patients without regard to nationality and religion. We treat Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other nationalities without bias, and 30% of the patients who are children are Palestinians.'

He went on to say: 'We've begun cooperating with the Palestinians. We now train teams of physicians from the hospital in Beit Jala in the southern West Bank, to treat cancer among children. We have about 60 Palestinian medical interns and specialist physicians who will be returning to the [Palestinian] Authority areas to carry out their work.'"

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 6, 2013]

Arab-Israeli MD tops her Technion class

Dr. Mais Ali Saleh graduated No. 1 in her class, although Hebrew is not her native language, while juggling work, studies, and getting married.

(By Avigayil Kadesh)

Mais Ali Saleh on graduation day, posing beside her

student research project

The newest staff obstetrician-gynecologist at Carmel Medical Center in Haifa is hardly the only Arab-Israeli physician on staff, nor the only female. Dr. Mais Ali Saleh’s main distinction is that she was the No. 1 student in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s 2013 medical school graduating class.

“From the time I was five years old, I wanted to be a doctor,” she says. “I was never interested in anything else.”

By the time she was in 11th grade she had decided to go into OB/GYN. “Most women prefer a female doctor,” she explains in a phone interview during a few minutes stolen from her busy schedule. “With intimate problems such as urinary incontinence, they are embarrassed to go to a male doctor.”

Ali Saleh emphasizes that although people outside Israel may have the impression that Arab-Israeli students at Israel’s premier engineering and science university are rare, this is not the case.

“The Technion medical school has about 35 percent Arab-Israeli students,” she says. (In June 2013 the actual number was close to 50%, according to some sources; 22% of all medical students in Israel are Arabs) Overall, Arab students make up some 20% of the university’s student body, paralleling their numbers in the Israeli population. 

Nor is it unusual for a non-Jewish Technion student or faculty member to achieve star status. Last year’s Technion valedictorian was Arza Haddad, a Christian woman from a Lebanese family who earned a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering.

Another notable example is Prof. Hossam Haick, a chemical engineer at the Technion’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute and inventor of the NA-NOSE device that detects serious diseases by analyzing breath samples. A Christian Arab, he was raised in Nazareth.
Ali Saleh, 27, grew up nearby in the mixed Muslim and Christian village of Yafa an-Naseriyye (“Jaffa of Nazareth”) and at first struggled with the Technion’s Hebrew classes. Though she had learned the language at school, it took awhile for her to become fluent.

Better opportunities

Ali Saleh could have avoided the language barrier by studying in Jordan, but she says the Israeli medical schools are of higher quality and the opportunities after graduation are superior. Earning excellent grades on the high school matriculation exams and the psychometric college entrance exams, in addition to her personal interview, put her ahead of the fierce competition. 
“Those who can't meet the admission requirements are forced to study abroad,” she says. “Getting high achievements in the psychometric exam doesn't make you a better student; you need to solve many complicated questions in a very limited time, and this exam constitutes a major obstacle for both the Jewish and Arab students.”

Impressive as it is that she gained admission to the Technion’s Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and overcame her linguistic difficulties, it is even more impressive that she rose to the top so quickly. In her first year, she was chosen by the Knesset as one of eight students from around the country to receive an academic award of excellence.

She did this while juggling medical school and work. Ali Saleh was an instructor in a psychometric preparation course, an educator in the Technion’s Student Advancement Center and a research assistant in the clinical biochemistry laboratory. And she also got married while in the midst of her studies, to Technion Medical School alumnus Dr. Nidal Mawasi.

Ali Saleh credits good time management for her extraordinary achievements.

“I think the main thing is to divide time wisely between study, work and personal life,” she says. Unlike many of her fellow students, she never crammed for tests or pulled all-nighters.
“I didn’t just learn material right before the test. I was constantly reviewing. If you study little by little, you internalize it better. And I made time to have fun. At four or five o’clock I’d finish studying and close the books and go to the sea.”

Ali Saleh comes from a family and hometown that fully supported her ambitions. Her own mother got a college degree later in life and now is studying for a doctorate in education.
Now that she’s a mom (her first baby – a girl – was born in October 2013), Ali Saleh says her goal is to continue working at the hospital part time and spend the rest of her working hours in a community practice.