Following an exploratory mission carried out by two members of Mehad in the West Bank, our NGO has identified urgent health needs on the ground, particularly in terms of training and access to care, and is launching an intervention programme to help the civilian population.
Since 7 October, the situation in terms of access to healthcare has deteriorated considerably for people living in the West Bank, the territory located in the west of Palestine, to the point of becoming alarming.
“With the reinforcement of checkpoints, the territory is more fragmented than ever “, explains Mehdi El Melali, an emergency doctor in charge of the Palestine mission for Mehad , “All the vital routes are cut off, which prevents the population from accessing health resources, which are nonetheless good!
According to the humanitarian doctor, “little is said about the West Bank in the media, but all the indicators are red for the weeks and months to come”.
Mehdi El Melali, our mission manager, talks to health professionals in the West Bank.
Millions denied access to healthcare
The fragmentation of the territory and the blocking of communication routes are having harmful, even dramatic consequences for the 3.3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank: “people with bullet wounds or war injuries find itimpossible to receive emergency treatment “, says Mehdi El Melali, “and many pregnant women find themselves giving birth in poor conditions, sometimes in ambulances that wait for hours at checkpoints, potentially endangering the lives of the baby and its mother “.
More generally, access to even the most basic healthcare is made difficult or impossible for most of the population. Health workers themselves often find it difficult to get to their place of work.
Training healthcare workers and mobile clinics: the two pillars of Mehad’s work
After meeting with various players in the Palestinian healthcare system, the Mehad team, drawing on the expertise acquired by our NGO in the conflict zones of Syria and Ukraine, has identified five priority areas for its intervention programme, which will be implemented over the next few weeks:
–Emergency ultrasound training to meet the needs arising from the fragmentation of the territory.
–Training in war surgery: like emergency ultrasound, this need is linked to the fact that surgeons, who are competent and in sufficient numbers in the West Bank, do not necessarily have access to the areas where clashes take place. It is therefore important to train health professionals to be able to intervene in this type of injury where action is vital.
– Emergency childbirth training, with the aim of training paramedics in basic reflexes and managing childbirth.
We hope to follow this up with :
– Setting up a supply chain for medical consumables for care centres.
– Deployment of mobile clinics to give people access to healthcare, even those who are most isolated because of traffic restrictions.
Negotiations are underway to carry out these missions as part of a humanitarian partnership.
As for Gaza, access to which unfortunately remains totally blocked at present, our teams are ready to intervene to provide emergency care and deliver medical equipment, medicines and foodstuffs, and to rebuild a health system that is over 80% destroyed in the long term.
