Humanitarian relief efforts continue in Gaza, West Bank

While the PCRF continues to sponsor surgery missions to the Middle East to treat children and train local doctors and nurses (nearly two dozen so far in 2009), and to send injured and sick children outside for free medical care that is not available to them locally (over two dozen children sent out for free care so far in 2009), we also sponsor many other kinds of humanitarian relief and aid for children on the ground in the Middle East. In addition to ongoing efforts, like our child-sponsorship program, we also support humanitarian relief for some of the most marginalized and neglected children in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon’s camps. In April, the distribution of hundreds of wheelchairs for handicapped and injured kids continued in the Gaza Strip, despite the 4-member team of American volunteers being denied entry into Gaza to distribute the chairs by the IDF. In the Shaboura area of Rafah refugee camp, perhaps the most impoverished location in Palestine, at-risk children were provided free nutritional milk by the PCRF. Over one-quarter of Gaza’s children suffer from imposed malnutrition. In the besieged West Bank town of Qalqilya, the PCRF provided poor school children free eyeglasses in an effort to help improve their education. Over the past two years, thousands of children received free eyeglasses through the PCRF. Many more similar humanitarian relief programs are planned for Palestinian children living under occupation or in the diaspora in the coming months.