The Palestinian Hospital

We’ve been in Haifa Hospital for precisely seven minutes before the power cuts out.

I know this because the clock on the wall by the reception booth sits proudly in between a picture of Yasser Arafat and a plastic sign showing a Kalashnikov rifle crossed through with livid red strokes. No guns. Not in here, at least.

“Electricity is one of our biggest problems,” says Dr Alim al-Ahmed. “You’ve lived in Beirut, you know the problems we have. Here, those problems are ten times worse.”

In the next 30 minutes the power goes out a further six times. Each time the two head surgeons, sitting languidly in their air-conditioned office, stop their paperwork for the briefest of moments, and resume with eyes squinted.

With me on the leather sofa is Dr Suzie Millar, Head of A&E at INOVA Fairfax Hospital in Washington. She was prepared for the power cuts and has brought provisions. She rummages in her backpack and pulls out two headlamps.

As the Palestinian surgeons play with the lights, shining yellow beams onto the back of their hands, I ask Dr Millar what they will use them for.

“They’ll use these for operating when the power cuts out,” she says, as if exasperated by the prospect.

And what did she use them for back in the US?

“These?” she asks, incredulously. “Maybe going camping.”

After being walked around the three story Hospital in the heart of Bourj al-Barajneh, I realise that Dr Millar’s comments were not disparaging. The hospital has 6 doctors and 30 beds for the estimated 60,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.

It is funded entirely by the PLO, somewhat changed from its recent history, and Ahmad, from the Palestine State Embassy, explains to me how it handles any hospital’s most difficult operation, finance.

“If a woman comes to us and needs attention, we know she cannot afford it. The cost of a bed is 125,000 lira ($75) and that’s without drugs or treatment.

“We will ask her what she has, make some inquiries and we will get her the money.”

She will be helped because she is a Palestinian. The same treatment doesn’t apply outside the camps.

(As this point, it seems fair to say that the word ‘camp’ is highly misleading. These ‘camps’ are made of concrete buildings, with electricity generators, running water, balconies and airy courtyards, wrought iron door knockers and leather furniture. The muddy streets are flanked with restaurants, garages, internet cafes and a splendid mosque, crescented minaret looming imperiously over the concrete walls marking the ‘camp’ boundary. Some Palestinians have lived in these settlements for more than 40 years, three generations sharing a living space. The word ‘camp’ is used in Lebanon to emphasize the transient nature of the accommodation. But these people are not going away.)

In fact, they’re increasing. I speak with Dr Ichlas, Head of the Maternity Unit at Haifa. She tells me she and her two midwives delivery about 50 babies a month.

A month? That’s an impossibly small number for 60,000 inhabitants. This is their only hospital.

Dr Ichlas tells me that although UNWRA runs maternity clinics for consultations, antenatal care etc., upto 30 percent of Palestinian births are done at home. As we leave the unit, I walk past a tiny, jaundiced baby stretched out as if it is sunbathing under a UV light.

Although it can’t be more than two days old, its delicate ears are pieced with aquamarine studs. The nurse, coming to check on the girl, strikes up a Marlboro Light before readjusting the light.

These are first-world doctors, working in third-world conditions, in a country with first-world facilities.

We pass along a ward with brightly painted walls, each room filled with a patient and apparently half their extending family. There is an old man in his white, slightly sullied underwear with a drip in arm and cigarette in mouth.

Dr Millar, despite being evidently appalled by the place’s sanitation, has nothing but admiration for Haifa’s physicians.

“These people are working without even the most basic of equipment. They don’t even had a CAT scan and, for trauma surgeons, that is unbelievable.

“In the States, anyone with anything suspect gets sent upstairs [for a CAT scan]. Here, they have no idea what’s happened until they open them up.”

In a trauma surgery theatre, there is a brand-new ventilator sitting forlorn in the corner, it’s packaging still draped loosely over its monitor. I ask Dr Alim why they don’t use it.

“Unfortunately, no one can use it.”

It’s a story that applies to an entire race. As Palestinians these doctors are barred from working anywhere in Lebanon, other than at Haifa. All of them have trained in Russia or Libya, easily as well-trained as western doctors. That they are superb physicians is unacknowledged by circumstance. They work with what little they have, saving lives when they can, but more often watching patients die because they lack access to facilities a mile way that would see them saved.

“These are first-world doctors, working in third-world conditions, in a country with first-world facilities,” says Dr Millar.

As we leave the hospital, there’s a man hunched over outside the maternity ward. A nurse in baby pink scrubs walks out with a beaming smile. The man – big as a bear, strong and ruddy – crumples into tears of joy.