The picture above is from the Physicians for Human Rights clinic in Tel Aviv. The clinic sees mainly illegal workers and refugees. I was lucky to volunteer before the clinic closed its doors in protest of the government doing nothing to help with the growing refugee problem and their assumption that PHR would take care of things. There are now thousands of refugees from Africa, many fleeing from Darfur by way of Egypt.
Anyhow PHR also runs a free clinic in the West Bank so I decided to go today and see what it was all about.
Gas station in Taibe where me met and had really good coffee.
Even tractors need to fill up.
This morning 4 of us left Beer Sheva and drove up to Taibe, an Israeli-Arab town, where we met the Israeli doctors and translators that were also volunteering. We went through the checkpoint without even stopping (entering the West Bank isn't a problem) It was about a 30 minute drive to Beit Furiq, a smallish town in the Nablus(Shechem) area. The clinic takes place in areas where there is less access to health care. The team consisted of a family doctor, an internist, a neurologist, a pediatrician and a chiropracter, plus translators and students.
Local ambulance.
Kids following us into the clinic.
When we arrived patients, and mothers were already lined up waiting for us. There were alot more people than I expected. The students divided up amongst the doctors, so I started out with the neurologist who saw mainly people complaining of generalized pain, but a few interesting cases, like a young man that had been in jail in Israel for 2 years, had suffered some head trauma and now was having vision and hearing problems. Another man had a bullet wound in the back of his neck and half his face was paralyzed. Some of the men couldn't be given much help and were refered to hospitals which hopefully they could find some way to afford. The chiropracter was set up on the other side of the room, and was busy with lots of men complaining of back pain. For each patient, there were at least 4 other men observing (while smoking cigarettes) and giving advice.
After a while, I went up to join the family doctor, who seeing all kinds of patients, mainly women and older men. One boy came in with jaw and tooth pain, his teeth were totally rotten, he needed a dentist. It was hard to see so many people who needed more specialized care that they probably wouldn't get.
We worked until about 3, ate some pita and lamb kebabs, hopped on the bus and headed back to Israel.
Lots of posters on the outside of the cement buildings of the town, which had apparently seen lots of action during the second intifada. The posters mainly depicted Saddam Hussein(think that needs to be updated) and gun wielding young men in front of the Temple Mount.
