RAMALLAH: The Israeli Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) organization said yesterday that some 50,000 Arab children in 11 unrecognized Bedouin villages in the southern Israeli region of Negev lack medical care.
In a report, entitled, “Israel’s Stepchildren” PHR said there is not a single pediatrician in the clinics serving the unrecognized villages.
These villages lack basic infrastructure and facilities such as electricity, running water or provisions for waste and sewage disposal. Moreover, the Bedouin residents live under a constant threat of house demolitions since there are no plans for the villages and no building permits have been issued by Israeli authorities.
The report said that the situation is grave because children in the unrecognized villages have extremely high rates of illness and death. Only 25 percent of the region’s children live in these villages, but they account for about 80 percent of the children hospitalized at Be’er Sheva’s Soroka Medical Center every summer.
Apart from pediatricians, the clinics have no gynecologists, no other specialists and no pharmacies, the report said. A few of the staff members speak Arabic and the clinics are open only a few hours every week. At the clinics in Beir Haddaj, Alqarin and Umm Matnan, for instance, doctors see patients 127 hours per week combined. In the nearby Jewish towns of Omer, Meitar and Lehavim, by contrast, doctors see patients 406 hours in a week.
The Israeli Health Ministry said that by law, the health maintenance organizations are responsible for providing health services and it is working with them to overcome the staff shortage by offering incentives to nurses and caregivers who work in Bedouin villages. Moreover, it said, efforts to improve health care in these villages are bearing fruit, as proven by a study published last month that showed a decline in infant mortality and a rise in vaccination rates among Bedouin communities.
The Israeli Clalit Health Services, which operates most of the clinics in question, claimed that every clinic is staffed by a doctor, nurse and administrator and that most of the doctors are specialists in family medicine.
