Hadassah joins relief effort to aid Palestinian health care

NEW YORK, Feb. 9 (JTA) — A cargo plane landed at the new Gaza Airport this week carrying 85,000 pounds of good will. The delivery of medicines and medical supplies is headed for Palestinian health care facilities, with a second, smaller shipment to come by sea headed for the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem for its work in Israel. Organized by a group of Texas doctors, Hadassah officials and a non-profit international relief agency, the shipments are dedicated to the memory of Jordan’s King Hussein, who died Feb. 7 of cancer. The first care package represents an international effort to improve Palestinian medical care and facilities. Another long-term goal, say organizers, is to open channels of communication between Israeli health care professionals and scientists and their Palestinian counterparts. “What we hope to come out of the shipment is cooperative efforts, conferences and the introduction of medical personnel” from Hadassah and the Palestinian Authority, said Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld, the chairman of the Texas Hadassah Medical Research Foundation. The foundation, established in 1991, is a collaborative exchange among two Houston-area hospitals, Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America and the Hadassah Medical Organization, a network of hospitals, outpatient clinics and medical schools. Nearly two years ago, representatives of the foundation met with Israeli doctors and medical scientists to solicit ideas for projects to fund. The idea for the airlift grew out of that meeting, and Hadassah Medical Organization staff worked with Palestinian and Israeli authorities to make arrangements on the ground. Rubenfeld said in a phone interview that Hadassah’s policy of providing service to diverse religious and ethnic populations served as an example of the kind of humanitarian work the Texas foundation aims to support. The Houston group raised $40,000 for freight costs from local Jewish and Arab doctors. The AmeriCares relief group handled the actual collection and shipment of donated supplies from pharmaceutical companies worldwide, said Andrew Hannah, the group’s vice chairman. AmeriCares was established in 1982 and has provided billions of dollars in disaster relief and humanitarian aid in over 119 countries. Hannah credited the Hadassah Medical Organization for facilitating the project – – including introducing AmeriCares to the Palestinian Health Department and to the Palestinian Civil Aviation Authority, and obtaining the “blessings” of Israeli and Palestinian officials. Hadassah and AmeriCares agents in Israel will oversee the distribution of the supplies to clinics, hospitals and health care workers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In late 1994, the Palestinian Authority took over responsibility for the Palestinian Health Department from the Israeli Civil Administration. Since then, observers in the field have found that Palestinian physicians have been working with limited medical resources. “Setting up an infrastructure for a government medical delivery system is really quite a daunting task,” said Rubenfeld. The massive cargo is “just a beginning.” He added that the delivery is believed to be the first humanitarian aid to land at the Gaza Airport, which opened in November. The director general of the Hadassah Medical Organization, Avi Israeli, said in a statement announcing the shipment that he “strongly believe that programs which benefit all the residents of the region help foster a culture of peace.”