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Doa'a Ayad, a 10 month old girl from Gaza, had a hole in her heart that was surgically corrected by SACH doctors on December 15, 2007, and was able to return home, asymptomatic, to Gaza soon thereafter.
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| By Israel Insider staff July 27, 2008 |
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| Farah Bacher arrived at SACH in Holon, Israel, from Gaza at the age of 5 months, accompanied by her grandmother in late December 2007. On January 10 she had a successful operation to correct a congenital heart defect. |
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Israel is blamed for closing the border with Gaza after thousands of rockets and mortars were fired on Israeli border communities, and blamed again for allegedly not making exceptions to that closure for urgent humanitarian cases.
These are the accusations made recently by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who emotionally portrayed the bitter complaint of a bereaved father whose daughter died from a congenital heart defect because, he said, Israel did not let her in. This, he wrote, contributed to "Strengthening Extremists," the title of his article. Now, several weeks after the closure has been lifted according to the terms of the ceasefire arrangement with Hamas, Kristof's accusations still hang in the air:
Consider Adham Sharif, a 26-year-old man whose only child, a baby girl named Mariam, had a tiny hole in her heart and needed surgery to repair it. Gaza hospitals were unable to perform such an operation, but doctors said that surgeons in Israel or in neighboring countries could save her.
In theory, there was an exception to the siege to let people out of Gaza in medical emergencies. But Mr. Sharif could not get the Israeli permit for Mariam to leave, and she died in November. ?It?s so hard,? he told me. ?You see your child dying, and you can?t save her.?
Does Mr. Sharif blame Hamas as the cause of the blockade that cost his daughter?s life? ?Of course not,? he said. ?I blame the ones who closed the border: Israel. And America, its ally.?
Kristof makes it appear that the "theory" of exceptions is just lip service. But our research reveals that an Israeli organization -- dedicated specifically to the kind of emergency surgery that could have saved Mariam's life -- has been bringing children from Gaza and the West Bank across borders, undeterred by Israeli authorities, even during the period when there was a tight closure on transport and normal traffic across the border with Israel.
David Litwack, Executive Director of the US-based fundraising arm of the Save a Child's Heart Foundation in Tel Aviv, takes issue with the Times columnist on the facts. "Kristof implies that Israel does not allow Palestinians to leave Gaza for medical emergencies. Nothing could be further from the truth. Save a Child's Heart has been saving Palestinian children suffering from heart problems on a regular basis since 1996. In 2007 we treated 250 Gazan children. There are Gazan children being treated at our facilities in Israel right now, and they have been treated continuously even during the periods when the borders between Israel and Gaza were tightly sealed."
Litwack says that if anyone is to be blamed for interfering with vital care, it is on the Gazan side of the border. "The level of rocket fire from Gaza into Israel has sometimes caused delays for Palestinians seeking medical care in Israel. However, Save a Child's Heart has continued to bring children into Israel for treatment, although, at times, at reduced capacity."
The more critical limitation, Litwack says, is not sporadic rocket fire not governmental interference but rather lack of funds. "There is a six month waiting list of Palestinian children who need heart surgery. The reason is not political. It's financial. We simply need more money in order to save more children."
Litwack says that it typically takes about $10,000 to save the life of a child, including the costs associated with heart surgery and hospital care -- often for weeks -- in a special care facility in Wolfson Hospital in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon.
Third-party reports earlier this year, from the Associated Press and from IRIN, publication of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs -- hardly Israeli mouthpieces -- confirm the treatment of Gazan children by Save a Child's Heart even during the peak months of border closure.
IRIN cites the case of a six-month-old infant who came for a checkup with his grandmother, Haifa, from the Dir al-Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in mid-January. "This child would have died without surgery," said Dr Alona Raucher-Sternfeld, as she simultaneously looked at the small Palestinian baby, Jamal, and the echo machine checking his heart.
"Jamal was operated on here when he was two months old, suffering from two heart defects. His tiny size further complicated the surgery, which was ultimately a success, the doctor said. "
"When he came here, he was blue. It was an emergency," Raucher-Sternfeld said, reviewing the initial referral from Al-Awda hospital in Gaza.
One-year-old Shaheed, from northern Gaza, came with her grandmother to the hospital late in the day. They had been held up at Erez for an extended period of time, not because of arbitrary or punitive decision but because of a bureaucratic mistake made by a clerk, Israeli or Palestinian. Someone had mistakenly entered the wrong date on the permit application.
"We ignore all the politics and we are on great terms with the doctors in Gaza, despite violence and wars," said Dr. Akiva Tamir, head of cardiology at Wolfson Hospital near Tel Aviv. The Israeli surgical teams are often joined in the operating theater and at bedside by their Palestinian counterparts.
The closure of the Rafa border crossing separating Egypt and Gaza actually increased the leniency of Israeli officials in making medical exceptions. Col. Nir Press, head of the Israeli coordination and liaison administration in Gaza, said the number of permits to Israel issued for medical reasons had risen 50 percent in 2007 compared to the previous year. Some foreign aid workers said this was a result of the closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
Press does not deny that Israeli has imposed tighter restrictions on who can cross, but said that this did not affect the ability of children to cross but rather the adults who could escort them after Palestinian terrorists, men and women, took advantage of permits issued for medical reasons and even concealed bombs in body casts and under ambulance beds. In 2004, four Israeli soldiers at the Erez crossing were killed when a Palestinian patient blew herself up inside the terminal. As a result, in some cases, a grandmother or other adult must accompany child rather than a parent or sibling.
Volunteers from Save a Child's Heart stressed the apolitical nature of their program, noting that the man who started it 12 years ago, Ami Cohen, who has since died, believed strongly in looking past race, religion and nationality, and instead preferred to focus on individuals.
"If there's an Israeli child and a Palestinian child, whoever is in a more dire condition will get treatment first," said a hospital nurse.
Since its founding in 1996, Save a Child's Heart has treated 900 children from Gaza and more than 1,000 from Iraq and other Arab states that have no relations with Israel, as well as countries across Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, program director Simon Fisher said.
Tax-deductible contributions to the American Friends of Save a Child's Heart, a 501c3 organization, can be made at its website. |
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