Hospital that heals division

Amid the ever-deepening separation of Israeli and Palestinian life, the Hadassah stands out - a clinic run by a Jewish organisation that is sworn to save lives regardless of the patient's religion.

By Donald Macintyre
Saturday, 10 May 2008


If this were any family, there would be nothing remarkable about the way six-year-old Adham Takatka gently tickles the palms of his baby brother Mohammed before, unprompted, planting a kiss on one of his cheeks. But the bond between these two brothers will always be special. It isn't everyone who can say his first achievement as a new-born infant was to save someone's life, but Mohammed will certainly be able to make that unusual boast when he grows up.


Today, Adham happily rides his fairy cycle round the family's living room in the West Bank village of Marah Ma'ala. Eight months ago, he was lying in hospital in dire need of a bone marrow transplant. Samples had been taken from his siblings and five other relatives; none produced the match needed to save their firstborn's life. "My nerves collapsed," recalls his father, Ahmad. "This is a deadly disease. If there was no transplant he was going to die."

There seemed to be only one hope left, a one in four chance that the unborn infant his mother Warda was carrying would have the matching marrow. That he did is why his oldest brother is alive today. But if Adham wouldn't have made it without Mohammed, he certainly wouldn't have made it without the Hadassah Hospital's paediatric haematology-oncology department either. Adham arrived at the Hadassah after a deeply dispiriting year of his parents trailing him round hospitals in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, with symptoms that included a pronounced yellowing of the white of his eyes, and of his urine. The dismal round ended with his father being told first, that his son probably had cancer and second, that there was no hope of being treated at a Palestinian hospital.

"One doctor in Bethlehem told me Adham had two months to live," he says. "I was angry and frustrated. Even if it was true he shouldn't have said it."

By now, a desperate Mr Takatka approached the Peres Centre for Peace, whose Saving Children programme helps find places for seriously ill Palestinian children in Israeli hospitals. The centre paid the 45,000 shekels (£6,400) it cost to admit him for three days of diagnosis which established that Adham did not have cancer but rather aplastic anaemia, a rare and potentially fatal disorder in which the bone marrow fails to produce enough blood cells.

more...

solve.

if they need or accept financial donations?
A most worthy cause.

This is the British organization that supports them; there is probably an equivalent one in America.

www.hadassahuk.org