Barrier in West Bank threatens residents' health care, says report

Almost a third of West Bank Palestinian villages will be denied free and open access to healthcare facilities once the Israeli government has completed constructing the West Bank barrier, says a report by the French non-governmental organisation Médecins du Monde.

In June 2002 the Israeli government began to build a barrier around the West Bank that, according to the Israel Defence Forces, will “lessen the impact and scope of terrorism on the citizens of Israel.” Already 185 km long, it will eventually be 622 km long and consist of fences, ditches, patrol roads, and a concrete wall 8-9 m high costing an estimated $4.7m (£2.5m; €3.6m) per km.

Worst hit will be the villages confined within the “seam zone,” the territory between the green line (the 1949 armistice line that delineates Israel's pre-1967 border with the West Bank) and the barrier, according to the report. Villages situated in the enclaves formed by the route of the barrier will also be badly affected, it says. Palestinians wanting to leave these areas to travel to another town in the West Bank will have to apply for a permit and pass through a checkpoint or gate guarded by a soldier.

People requiring emergency health treatment in Palestinian hospitals in other parts of the West Bank face an even longer journey than at present and may not be able to access emergency care at all during the night, according to Régis Garrigue, head of Médecins du Monde's Palestinian projects. He said: “The people inside the enclaves are in a big jail. Sometimes the passage into the enclaves is shut for a day or a night or even a week.”

In Abu Dis and Aizaria, two Palestinian towns where the barrier has already been completed, the average time for an ambulance to travel to the nearest hospitals in Jerusalem has increased from about 10 minutes to over one hour and 50 minutes, according to the report. Mr Garrigue says that once the barrier is completed this problem will affect many more villages.

“If patients don't have access to their medical facilities or if medical staff cannot reach the facilities to provide medical services the healthcare system is bound to deteriorate,” the report warns.

The extension of the barrier in the West Bank will lead to further difficulties for residents trying to get health care

Credit: http://www.andrewaitchison.com/

Dr Yitzhak Sever, director of the Department of International Relations in the Ministry of Health, said that all the inhabitants on the west of the barrier, located within the seam zone, are given permits to travel to other Palestinian hospitals. More than 45 000 permits for patients were issued over the past year. He also stressed that Israeli doctors treat Palestinian patients and train health professionals, despite the former Palestinian Health Minister's refusal to sit on joint Palestinian-Israeli health committees after the second intifada in 2000.

“Maybe the barrier will not be continued, we don't know. It's there for security reasons as determined by the Ministry of Defence. I know in the majority of places in the West Bank, building is frozen and the barrier will be under debate in the negotiations about disengagement and peace. We hope the new era will being peace for the two peoples,” he told the BMJ.

The Ultimate Barrier: Impact of the Wall on the Palestinian Health Care System is available at http://www.healthandwall.org/ under “More info”