Gaza facts. Did you know?

TriumphantAngel

Best of Times wrote:

TriumphantAngel wrote:

according to the health ministry, more than seventy percent of medicines donated for Gaza have been dumped because they were past their expiry date. they were worth many millions of dollars. and they were worth many lives.

Surplus of coffins, shortage of medicines in Gaza


Goods accumulate at the Israeli-controlled border crossing with Gaza. (Mohammed Omer/IPS)

GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - Samir Tahseen al-Nadeem died after waiting 35 days for an exit permit for treatment for his heart condition. He was 26. The medicines he needed could not get in. But the coffins do.

The health ministry now lists 375 deaths due to shortage of life-saving medicines. The medicines sit just outside the borders of the territory until most pass their expiry dates. But there are no expiry dates on about 10,000 coffins that have been donated for Gaza. The coffins do make it to those who eventually need them.

By the end of last month more than seventy percent of medicines donated for Gaza had been dumped because they were past their expiry date, the health ministry says. They were worth many millions of dollars. And they were worth many lives.

"Much of the donated medicines came from Arab states," Dr. Mounir al-Boursh, director of the pharmaceutical department at the health ministry, tells IPS. This added up to 10,300 tons of medicines worth 25 million dollars, he said.

Only about thirty percent of this could be used, he said; the rest either expired, or was inaccessible because of restricted distribution by the Israelis, who control what gets into Gaza.

It's not easy to dump medicines safely, either. Much of unused supply mixes with domestic waste, creating health hazards far from bringing relief. The World Health Organization has had to "raise concern about the unsafe disposal of expired medication and other medical disposable material," WHO spokesperson told IPS.

But the Gaza ministry has received 10,000 coffins, about 1,000 of them for children, Dr. Boursh said. Such help, he said, "does not meet with the needs of the Gaza Strip."

What Gaza needs is 110 types of medicines and 123 types of medical equipment that the ministry has listed. Gaza is expected to run out of more medicines over the next few months. The announced ease in the blockade of Gaza has not currently brought more supplies.

The medicines now under threat are for childcare, in the maternity departments, and for conditions such as cancer, epilepsy, hemophilia and thalassemia.

"Death has become routine," says a young woman from Jabaliya in the north of Gaza Strip as she waits in the corridor at the al-Nasser Children's Hospital in Gaza City. Next to her, the parents of two-year-old Israa Tabsh are struggling to save the child, born with a heart defect.

"We have been waiting for weeks for permission to leave Gaza for the cardiac surgery she needs," says the child's father, Fayez al-Tabsh. The treatment is available at the al-Maqased hospital in East Jerusalem, but Tabsh can't get there.

The family, like others, first needs an exit permit, and then a financial guarantees statement that all expenses would be met by the health ministry in the occupied West Bank, which is under the control of the Fatah-led administration, unlike the Hamas government in Gaza.

That guarantee is near impossible for most patients. "You need connections," says a 53-year-old mother waiting for a guarantee for her son. "We are caught between corrupt officials and death."

Patients in Gaza depend on the West Bank government both for permits and for many needed medicines. In 2010 Gaza received only 22 percent of the medicines it needed from the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah in the West Bank, Boursh said. Supplies are declining. "In 2008 we had received fifty percent, and in 2009, 49 percent."

The medicines that come in, and in time, are not easy to preserve. At the old al-Ghifari medical storage in Gaza City, the facility leaks fluids. "It's the rats," says a caretaker. "They get to the fluid bags, causing the leakages. The rats get the medicines, the patients the coffins."

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11569.shtml

Very Interesting. i guess when your only export is hatred and death, coffins are cheap;
medicine? not so much.
go Israel.

go Israel?

"Death has become routine," says a young woman from Jabaliya in the north of Gaza Strip as she waits in the corridor at the al-Nasser Children's Hospital in Gaza City. Next to her, the parents of two-year-old Israa Tabsh are struggling to save the child, born with a heart defect.

"We have been waiting for weeks for permission to leave Gaza for the cardiac surgery she needs," says the child's father, Fayez al-Tabsh. The treatment is available at the al-Maqased hospital in East Jerusalem, but Tabsh can't get there.

she's two years old, it's not an isolated case and all you can say is "go israel"?

you're applauding the death of children?

Best of Times

maybe those terrorist assholes shouldn't fire rockets from their back yards, then run in the house to hide w/ the women and children....

then trot dead babie out to the CNN camera mumbling their innocence and complain about murderous Jews.... Its bullshit.

Please realize that is just MY opinion, and I am aware that you have a different one.

Pepe Silvia

Best of Times wrote:

maybe those terrorist assholes shouldn't fire rockets from their back yards, then run in the house to hide w/ the women and children....

then trot dead babie out to the CNN camera mumbling their innocence and complain about murderous Jews.... Its bullshit.

Please realize that is just MY opinion, and I am aware that you have a different one.

i wonder how you would react if mexico began stealing land by force and bulldozing down american homes in texas, arizona and california and built mexican only roads and if you wanted to live there (where you and your family had for decades) you had to swear allegiance to mexico....

Best of Times

Pepe Silvia wrote:

Best of Times wrote:

maybe those terrorist assholes shouldn't fire rockets from their back yards, then run in the house to hide w/ the women and children....

then trot dead babie out to the CNN camera mumbling their innocence and complain about murderous Jews.... Its bullshit.

Please realize that is just MY opinion, and I am aware that you have a different one.

i wonder how you would react if mexico began stealing land by force and bulldozing down american homes in texas, arizona and california and built mexican only roads and if you wanted to live there (where you and your family had for decades) you had to swear allegiance to mexico....

Sounds pretty close to what's goin on now. And who said Obama didn't accomplish anything?

Byrnzie

Best of Times wrote:

maybe those terrorist assholes shouldn't fire rockets from their back yards, then run in the house to hide w/ the women and children....

then trot dead babie out to the CNN camera mumbling their innocence and complain about murderous Jews.... Its bullshit.

Please realize that is just MY opinion, and I am aware that you have a different one.

No, your post is bullshit. But we won't get into that.

Drowned Out

Byrnzie wrote:

Best of Times wrote:

maybe those terrorist assholes shouldn't fire rockets from their back yards, then run in the house to hide w/ the women and children....

then trot dead babie out to the CNN camera mumbling their innocence and complain about murderous Jews.... Its bullshit.

Please realize that is just MY opinion, and I am aware that you have a different one.

No, your post is bullshit. But we won't get into that.

ill get into it...bored, wth
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-upda ... s-20090108

now, even when reading an article from the most respected human rights org in the world, we need context....lets remember that the idf are in palestinian homes, using palestinian women and children as cover...and the ´palestinian gunman´was probably shooting out his fuckin livingroom window with his family crying in the bedroom.
i saw a map of gaza overlaid over a map of montreal a while back and was shocked at how small gaza actually is....hearing it be called the most densely populated area on earth, then realizing that, during operation cast lead, there were 300+ air bombing raids....well, i found more context....think about that...an area the size of philly, walled in, and bombed over 300 times in a couple weeks. wtf.

Byrnzie

Drowned Out wrote:

ill get into it...bored, wth
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-upda ... s-20090108

now, even when reading an article from the most respected human rights org in the world, we need context....lets remember that the idf are in palestinian homes, using palestinian women and children as cover...and the ´palestinian gunman´was probably shooting out his fuckin livingroom window with his family crying in the bedroom.
i saw a map of gaza overlaid over a map of montreal a while back and was shocked at how small gaza actually is....hearing it be called the most densely populated area on earth, then realizing that, during operation cast lead, there were 300+ air bombing raids....well, i found more context....think about that...an area the size of philly, walled in, and bombed over 300 times in a couple weeks. wtf.

Not to mention that not one single human rights organization has found any evidence of Palestinian fighters using human shields, whereas there's ample evidence of the IDF using Palestinian prisoners as human shields. But Israel's apologists always like to try and turn reality on it's head.

Pepe Silvia

Best of Times wrote:

Pepe Silvia wrote:

Best of Times wrote:

maybe those terrorist assholes shouldn't fire rockets from their back yards, then run in the house to hide w/ the women and children....

then trot dead babie out to the CNN camera mumbling their innocence and complain about murderous Jews.... Its bullshit.

Please realize that is just MY opinion, and I am aware that you have a different one.

i wonder how you would react if mexico began stealing land by force and bulldozing down american homes in texas, arizona and california and built mexican only roads and if you wanted to live there (where you and your family had for decades) you had to swear allegiance to mexico....

Sounds pretty close to what's goin on now. And who said Obama didn't accomplish anything?

please cite some sources of mexico demolishing a dozen or so homes belonging to americans so they can build a new tourist center or where mexico keeps more than 3/4 of the water supply giving the us just a tiny bit. can you name any towns or cities in the us where mexico has started building any mexican only towns or villages and roads?

i'm betting you can;t....

Pepe Silvia

Pepe Silvia wrote:

Best of Times wrote:

Pepe Silvia wrote:

i wonder how you would react if mexico began stealing land by force and bulldozing down american homes in texas, arizona and california and built mexican only roads and if you wanted to live there (where you and your family had for decades) you had to swear allegiance to mexico....

Sounds pretty close to what's goin on now. And who said Obama didn't accomplish anything?

please cite some sources of mexico demolishing a dozen or so homes belonging to americans so they can build a new tourist center or where mexico keeps more than 3/4 of the water supply giving the us just a tiny bit. can you name any towns or cities in the us where mexico has started building any mexican only towns or villages and roads?

i'm betting you can;t....

find any yet??????????????????????????????????

Best of Times

Sorry Pepe, I was enjoying my New Year's Eve weekend.

Did you have fun sitting at your computer all weekend and searching for internet evidence of Israeli war crimes?

Sounds like fun...

Forgot what the hell this was all about anyways....