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Editorial Note: The
following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may
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Comments are in parentheses. |
Thousands of Gazans Trek to Cairo for Medical
Treatment, Taking Advantage of Opening Egyptian Border Gate Since June
1, 2010
Published today (updated) 29/06/2010 12:39 Cairo - IRIN -
Thousands of Gazans are taking advantage of an open border crossing
with Egypt since 1 June to seek treatment for a range of illnesses in
Cairo hospitals.
"Israel's blockade has left everything in Gaza
in tatters. People can't find the simplest things to meet their needs,"
said 40-year-old Gazan Sayed Abu Asi, whose six-year-old son Mohamed has
a severe deformity in his right leg.
Due to the scarcity of
medical equipment and medicines in Gaza, he said he had been trying for
months to bring his son to Egypt for treatment but the Rafah border
crossing had always been closed.
Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak ordered an indefinite opening of the border, Gaza's only conduit
to the outside world not controlled by Israel (apart from the illegal
tunnels between Gaza and Egypt), the day after Israel's military action
against an aid-carrying flotilla on 31 May.
On 1 June, Abu Asi
and his son made it through the Rafah crossing and now the boy is being
treated in Nasser Medical Institute in northern Cairo, one of several
hospitals giving free treatment to Palestinians.
According to
the Egyptian government, some 16,000 Gazans have crossed into Egypt so
far at a controlled rate of around 500 a day. All those IRIN spoke to
complained of the helplessness they felt in Gaza, with severe limits on
imports and exports and the inability to rebuild damaged homes and
infrastructure.
"The situation in Gaza is worse than words can
say," said Sami Abdeen, who was also receiving treatment at the Nasser
Medical Institute. "There's no food, no medicine, nothing at all. Israel
doesn't even let cement into the Strip for us to build our homes, which
it destroyed last year."
Israel has partly eased its three-year
economic blockade of Gaza by allowing in some humanitarian items it used
to ban. However, the UN, aid agencies and the international community
have been urging Israel to completely lift the blockade, which it says
is in place for security reasons.
Gaza health care 'never been
worse'
Six-year-old Mohamed from Gaza has a severe deformity in
his right leg In a 14 June press statement, the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Gazan suffering could not be addressed
simply by providing aid. "The closure imposed on Gaza chokes off any
real possibility of economic development. Gazans continue to suffer from
unemployment, poverty, and warfare, while the quality of Gaza's health
care system has reached an all-time low," it said.
The ICRC said
stocks of essential medical supplies in Gaza were depleted "because of a
standstill in cooperation between the Palestinian authorities in
Ramallah and Gaza". At the end of May 2010, 110 of the 470 medicines
considered essential, such as chemotherapy and haemophilia drugs, were
unavailable. More than 110 of the 700 disposable items that should be
available were also out of stock
"The state of the health-care
system in Gaza has never been worse," said Eileen Daly, the ICRC's
health coordinator in Gaza. "Health is being politicized: that is the
main reason the system is failing. Unless something changes, things are
only going to get even worse. Thousands of patients could go without
treatment and the long-term outlook will be increasingly worrisome."
This situation has driven Abu Asi and thousands of other Gazans to
Egypt.
"Most of these people suffer chronic diseases because of
the hard conditions they experience in Gaza. Some have kidney failure,
others have cancerous tumours, but the majority have bone deformities,"
Bahaa Abu Zeid, manager of the Nasser Medical Institute, told IRIN,
adding that the hospital has been receiving around 70 Palestinian
patients a day.
"The bitter reality is that there is a complete
generation of Gazans who will be dependent for the rest of their lives,"
Abu Asi said. "They're young people who lost their legs in Israeli
attacks. They'll grow up always needing help from others."
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