Born in a control point

By IRIN

For three years now a UK medical journal, Lancet, has worked with the Palestinian health professionals and researchers to document the effects of stressful living-performing with economic difficulties and shortages, restrictions on movement, political tensions and fears of attack-and has just published its latest results.

Restrictions on the movement is a daily irritant occupied Palestinian territory (oPt): apart from tiresome and humiliating searches at checkpoints, bebøre never know safe, how long does their journeys, or whether, in fact, they can be done at all. But in a medical emergency, these restrictions may be a matter of life or death.

Last year lancets collaborators described living women waiting to give birth during the isrælske bombing raids on Gaza in early 2009 terrorism: they knew they might need urgent medical treatment at a time when they were trapped in their homes during the attacks. This year another of their researchers have looked at what happens to women already in the labour force, which is caught on the busy control points.

Halla Shoaibi of Ann Arbor University in the United States considers that in the period she studied (2000-2007) 10 percent of Palestinian pregnant women were delayed at checkpoints while travelling to hospital food. One result has been a dramatic increase in the number of home births, with women prefer to avoid road trips in the labour force for fear of not being able to reach the hospital in time.

Their fears are well-founded. MS Shoaibi says 69 babies were born at inspection sites during these seven years. Thirty five babies and five of the mothers died, a result which she considers to constitute a crime against humanity.

When the Group Lancet kept their first meeting in March 2009, Gaza is still reeling from the isrælske assault known as Operation Cast lead, which led to the deaths of well over a thousand people. In the most recent publication, researchers come back to this period with further analysis of the survey of material on the impact of the attacks on the civilian population.

Disruption to normal life was great. 45 Percent of those surveyed have had to leave their homes and move in with other people for at least 24 hours; 48 percent had other people move in with them; 48 percent of homes were damaged. Almost all had power cuts all or part of the time, and many also little disruption of other services-telephone, water supply and rubbish collection.

Psychological effects

In psychological effects reported 80 percent of a family member screaming or crying, or have nightmares. Loss of appetite was also commonly reported. But even if Gaza is a relatively small area, the effects varied considerably according to which the respondents fine, with the provinces of Gaza and North Gaza and Khan Yunis, and Rafah (near the border with Egypt) the least affected.

Another study looked at the feeling of insecurity, which remained, even six months after the end of the attacks. Some of the results could have expected-women, for example, felt more nervous and uncertain than men. The groups, which reported lower levels of uncertainty were those who were better educated, and had a better standard of living, and also the elderly, those over 65 years of age.

Not all studies published are directly linked to the Palestinian political situation; topics include smoking among teenagers, the number of pharmacists working in the territories (rather high, as it turns out), and the use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine.

Lancets Editor, Richard Horton, stresses the importance of encouraging academic research in all aspects of health, as part of the process of rebuilding Palestinian society and to strengthen its academic institutions.

He says he sees two immediate priorities: "first, while cooperation between scientists in Gaza and their colleagues in the West Bank is encouraging, more effort must be invested in order to build productive alliances between Palestinian academic institutions. And second, while there is much force in public health research, there is a gap in the clinical sciences. More attention needs to be paid to the strengthening of research into the many excellent clinical facilities in the region. "

-This article was published in the IRIN news-www.irinnews.org.