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Palestinians Stop Paying Israeli Hospitals for Gaza and West Bank Patients

[New York Times] Ethan Bronner - The PA has stopped paying for scores of Palestinian patients being treated in Israeli hospitals. Palestinians whose children were being treated in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem say they have been instructed by Palestinian health officials to place them in facilities in the West Bank, Jordan or Egypt. "We have been bombarded by frantic parents. This is a political decision taken on the backs of patients," said Dr. Michael Weintraub, director of pediatric hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplantation at Hadassah. The Palestinian health minister, Fathi Abu Moghli, said he was examining the entire referral procedure because he had no desire to see the wounded from the Gaza war receive Israeli care. An Israeli clinic set up on the Israeli-Gaza border the day the war ended has already closed since both Hamas and the PA boycotted it. Dr. Abu Moghli said that with 24 hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank, there was no reason for so many Palestinian patients to go to Israeli facilities, which he said were much more expensive and contributed to a culture of dependency. Dr. Weintraub said that if patients "live 10 minutes from Hadassah, they will do everything they can to get admitted. And we are happy to take them. There are no politics in our wards. Twenty percent of our patients are Palestinians, and we have one common enemy: cancer. The rest is immaterial."
2009-02-10 06:00:00
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