On May 18th, 16-year-old Hassan Nada from the Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Damascus arrived in Beirut in urgent need of care after suffering 3rd degree burns on his body at a gas station where he worked to support his family. The boy had dreams to go to school and get an education, but like many Palestinian refugee child now in the war-torn country of Syria, they are suffering from economic and political hardships unimaginable only a few years ago. The PCRF was requested to help him by an NGO in the camp, but he arrived without notice and we responded through our Beirut office to place him first in Haifa Hospital in the Bourj Al Barajnah refugee camp, where he stayed for a few days. However, due to the dire nature of his situation, and after being evaluated by plastic surgeon from the American University Hospital in Beirut, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sitta, we were able to get him transferred to Al Hamshiry PRCS Hospital near Ein el Hilweh camp, where the care is better. The boy suffers from malnutrition and neglect, and is in need of extensive medical care before anything can be done to improve his life. The PCRF is covering all of his medical expenses. 

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On May 20, a two member team of doctors arrived in the Gaza Strip to begin a week-long mission in treating burned and disfigured children through the PCRF. Surgeon Dr. Diachi Morioka from Tokyo, Japan and Belgian anesthesiologist working at Moorfields Hospital in Dubai, Dr. Piet Bekaert have both volunteered in the past through the PCRF and are volunteering at the European Hospital in Khan Younis.

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On May 11, a five-member of doctors and nurses from Switzerland and Germany returned to the Gaza Strip to provide expert plastic and reconstructive surgery on burned and injured children who cannot be treated in their homeland. The team were last working in Gaza last November when another round of violence engulfed the area. Surgeons Dr. Walter Kunzi, Dr. Johannes Kuttenberger, and Dr. Natasha Forster were joined by OR nurses Kathrin Sculze, Mirjana Keva-Dokic. All of the volunteers are giving their time to come to Gaza through the PCRF on a regular basis to ensure that our children get the care that they need.

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“When I looked down at my leg, it was bleeding badly. I started yelling so people would help me and take me to the hospital,” said the 14-year-old, who came from the Syrian town of Dael to Jordan seeking refuge.

Jamous and six-year-old Gozlan Ghassan were the first two children to be treated by the Jordan Chapter of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), a humanitarian relief group that offers medical assistance to children in the Middle East.

The PCRF’s Jordan Chapter, set up two months ago, celebrated its successful treatment of the two Syrians in a ceremony on Monday.

Established in 1991 to offer free medical care to Palestinian children who had suffered from the Palestine-Israel conflict, the US-registered humanitarian organisation now encompasses 17 chapters throughout the United States and the Middle East and offers help to children of all backgrounds.

“We treat the children based on their medical needs; we don’t care if they are Christian or Muslim, Palestinian, Syrian or Iraqi, Shiite or Sunni,” the co-founder and president of the PCRF, Steve Sosebee, told The Jordan Times at the ceremony.

“Our duty is to help any child here in the Middle East who needs medical care,” he added.

The organisation, based in Ramallah, sends children abroad for surgeries, brings medical teams to the Palestinian territories to treat children locally and sets up humanitarian projects like a cancer hospital for children in Beit Jala, Sosebee said.

In 2012 the PCRF operated on 1,542 children in the Palestinian territories and took 40 children to the US or elsewhere for treatment. In addition, 5,000 children were screened, Eyad Younis, head of the Jordan Chapter of the PCRF, told The Jordan Times.

The organisation’s Amman chapter was set up because of the increased need for medical treatment of children in Jordan.

“We decided that Jordan has enough capabilities medically and financially to do some of these cases here, especially now that we are getting a lot of non-Palestinian, non-Jordanian kids,” Younis said.

“So instead of sending them outside Jordan, we decided to try to find treatment for them here,” he noted.

“All hospitals in the States, Europe and Dubai treat the kids for free, but we have had a hard time in Jordan and Lebanon because of the influx of refugees. It is very hard for [hospitals] to offer free treatment, so we try to get reduced rates,” Sosebee said.

Jamous came to the Zaatari Refugee Camp near Mafraq, 80km northeast of Amman, two days after being treated temporarily at a Free Syrian Army field hospital near his hometown Dael.

“At the French hospital in the Zaatari camp, they tried to repair the veins in my leg but it didn’t work, so they had my leg amputated,” Jamous said.

In February, he was sent by the PCRF to the Texas Orthopaedic Hospital in Houston, the US to have an artificial leg fitted.

Ghassan was the first PCRF-patient to be treated in Jordan. She sustained serious injuries to her forehead when a tank shell hit her home in Daraa.

“She was treated at a government hospital in Daraa for 45 days, but we left for Jordan because the doctors in Daraa told me she needed surgery to cover the gash in the forehead and they didn’t have the capacity to do that,” Marifa Hamed, Ghassan’s grandmother, said.

The PCRF asked Nasri Khoury, a doctor at the Palestine Hospital in Amman, to treat Ghassan.

“When she came, her acute situation had settled down, but she had a bone defect which meant that anything could penetrate her forehead and damage her brain,” Khoury told The Jordan Times.

Merely 10 days after her operation, Ghassan is recovering quickly, sporting a large scar across her head.

“I was really happy when I found out the PCRF would help in Gozlan’s treatment, but I had my doubts because so many people had promised to help. I only believed that Gozlan would have her surgery when I actually saw it happening,” Hamed said.

By Gioia Forster
Source:

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On May 9, one year old, Mayar Taj Eddin from Syria underwent the first of many Esophageal Dilation procedures at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to help treat his Esophageal Atresia, a congenital medical condition, which he has lived with since birth. He traveled to the US with his mom and will be in Cincinnati for the next few months undergoing various medical procedures that are not available in his home country of Syria.

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