On April 2, a 5-person team worked for a week in the Thabet Thabet Hospital in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, providing poor children urological care that they cannot get locally. The team was led by Dr. Carlos Angel, a Staff Pediatric Surgeon at East Tennessee Childrens’ Hospital in Knoxville. The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund worked with Surgical Volunteers International to support this mission,...

On January 22nd, a 3-member team from the USA arrived in the West Bank town of Hebron to start a week of screening and treating children with urological disorders. The team included pediatric urological surgeon Dr. John Gazak from Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dr. Kevin Healy, an anesthesiologist from Ames, Iowa, and scrub nurse Teresa Bubb from Portland, Oregon. The same team worked...

On January 6, Dr. Anthony Balcom, a pediatric urologist  (Medical College of Wisconsin, the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin) and his wife, Dawn Balcom, a surgical assistant, completed a two-week mission in the West Bank town of Nablus. Over two dozen children had surgery at Rafidiah Hospital, and many dozens more were screened and consulted by the volunteer team, who worked also for the PCRF in November...

On November 8, Dr. Joseph A. Pettus, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC arrived in the West Bank town of Hebron to begin a week of urological surgery on poor patients at Alia government hospital. Dr. Pettus was to be a part of the joint PCRF-International Volunteers in Urology (IVU) mission last Spring, but was unable to...

On October 2nd, a 6-member team of doctors and nurses from the USA arrived in the West Bank town of Nablus to start a week of plastic and reconstructive surgery on children with cleft lip and palate deformities, as well as children with congenital urological disorders. The team included surgeons Dr. John Wallace and Dr. Mohammad Erakat, who provided cleft lip and palate surgery, and surgeon Dr. John Bingham,...

On April 4th, a large delegation of doctors and nurses from the USA and Chile completed a mission to the West Bank in which they provided free urological surgery at Hebron, Ramallah and Rafidiah government hospitals in Nablus. The PCRF teams were in coordination with International Volunteers in Urology, a group that we have cooperated in the past to treat children in Palestine with urological disorders. The...

On December 18, 2008, a 5-member team of doctors and nurses from the United States finished a week of pediatric urological surgery at Rafidiah Hospital in the West Bank town of Nablus. Despite having his surgical instruments and supplies confiscated by the Israeli authorities at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Dr. Anthony Balcom from the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin managed...

In late August, 2008, Dr. David and Cathy Brenner from Alaska returned to Palestine for the second time in 2008 to provide urology and general surgery at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. David is a urological surgeon and Cathy is a general surgeon. They volunteered in April at Alia Hospital in Hebron and Rafidiah Hospital in Ramallah. This trip to Gaza resulted in dozens of poor and needy patients getting...

On March 15, 2008, Professor José Ricardo Yañez Pizarro and his wife, anesthetist Dr. Ximena Castillo from the University of Concepción, in Chile arrived in the West Bank town of Beit Jala to begin a week of surgery on Palestinian children with congenital urological malformations, particularly children suffering from hypospadias. This is their first trip to Palestine through the PCRF. They were recruited...

On March 15, 2008, a 3-member team arrived in the West Bank town of Jenin for a week of pediatric urology at the main government hospital. The team was lead by surgeons Dr. Sakti Das from the Bay area of California and Dr. Scott Eggeners from the University of Chicago, as well as Dr. Hussein Abu Khudair, chief of anesthesiology at the King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman, Jordan. After screening 120 children...