Susan L Wagner of the Wayland (MA) Town Crier reports:WAYLAND - More than 200 people gathered recently at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland for a presentation titled "Gaza: An Eyewitness Account, Raising Awareness and Funds." The speakers were Drs. Ismail Mehr and Kanwal S. Chaudhry, members of the American Medical Mission to Gaza (AMM Gaza), which visited the Strip in late January, and Yousef Abdallah of Islamic Relief USA.
The AMM mission was the only group of American doctors up to that time to enter Gaza to provide medical assistance after the end of the hostilities of Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 18, 2009, with Israel. Their first attempt to enter via Egypt was refused by the Egyptian authorities who control parts of the border. They were finally able to slip in quietly on Jan. 24, staying until Jan. 31.
Mehr, chief of anesthesiology at St. James Mercy Hospital in Hornell, N.Y., was the leader of the team, and Chaudhry, a member of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Kings County Hospital in New York City, was the only woman in the group. Their "base camp," according to Mehr, was al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
During regular working hours, he said, he was assigned to the operating room, providing anesthesia to surgical patients. Chaudhry said she worked in both the medical and pediatric ERs, did rounds in the pediatric wards, and helped out in the operating room when necessary."I also went to the orphanage and did ‘well child checks’ there," she said.
In the afternoons and evenings, Mehr said, "Patients and family members would find us, and so we went to see them and make decisions to get them to the right people on our team to be taken care of."
According to both doctors, the medical crisis in Gaza is acute.
"The people there are suffering tremendously," Chaudhry said. "This is not only because of the most recent ‘Israeli offensive,’ but from the embargo that has been imposed on the Strip for the last 18 months. This does not allow anyone to enter or exit the Strip … and this is causing a slow grueling death among the people. They are not able to receive humanitarian aid, medications (such as chemotherapy), specialty trained health personnel, etc."
Mehr was taken aback at the amount of improvisation that was needed to treat the sick and wounded.
"I have been to third-world countries on medical relief before, and you always have to improvise," he said, "but not to this extent. We did treat acute burns, amputees, and so on, which we were expecting. But what we were not expecting were the children with cancer, the elderly with kidney failure, and middle-aged diabetics who cannot get insulin. These are issues that are fairly treatable and could be managed by a medical system."
The medical system in Gaza, he went on to say, needs a complete revamping and, for this, it is very important for physicians to be allowed into the Strip "unequivocally" for training purposes."It’s like in Iraq, where local troops are being trained to take over. In Gaza, it’s the local doctors and medical workers who need to be trained," he said.
Proceeds from the Islamic Center of Boston event went to Islamic Relief USA, which is in the midst of a multimillion-dollar campaign to benefit the people of Gaza.
