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August 8, 2010
Bad Medicine in Gaza
Phil Boehmke
The Mavi Marmara left the port of Haifi on Thursday under tow by a Turkish tugboat and two other ships from the "Gaza aid flotilla" set sail for home on Friday, all three vessels are expected to reach the port of Iskendurun by Tuesday. The incident between the alleged aid flotilla and the IDF which put the world on edge May 31st is still being investigated by the United Nations. Meanwhile Israel's naval blockade remains intact and continues to check the flow of weapons into the Gaza Strip despite international condemnation.
Food, medicine and essential supplies continue to reach the Palestinian people in Gaza with little or no difficulty. The roughly 1.5 million people inhabiting the Gaza Strip can count on their friends in the Muslim world and the international community to help provide for their needs. Charity of course takes on many forms and there are times when it is prudent to look the gift horse in the mouth.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI ) reports that among the medical supplies sent to Gaza by their trusted benefactors is two million dollars worth of Tamiflu which arrived well after the threat of H1N1 had passed. Mounir Al-Boursh, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry has remarked that "some countries get rid of their stocks" under the cloak of providing aid.
Inside the Ministry of Health warehouse in Gaza there are large quantities of medicine and supplies which have become a burden to the Palestinians and a challenge in terms of safe disposal due to the lack of incinerators or bio-hazard disposal units. The garbage dumps in Gaza become the final destination for a shocking amount of unsafe medicine where it contaminates the land and waits to unleash a potential catastrophe upon the people.
Reporter: "Mounir Al-Boursh, the head of the donations department in the Health Ministry in Gaza, says that only 30% of the medical aid donated after the war benefited the hospitals and health services."
Mounir Al-Boursh: "A certain country sent ten truckloads of medicine, accompanied by an official delegation, but all these medicines were past their expiration date."
Reporter: "We asked about these dialysis units, standing in a corner of the warehouse, which has arrived in one of the aid convoys.
"Why are they not taken to the hospitals?"
Gaza Health Ministry official Bassam Barhoum: "These devices were past their expected life span when we got them. In other words, all operational hours were used up in their country of origin."
Reporter: "These are disintegrating machines, and medicines that have passed their expiry date by months and even years. They arrive here without any supervision, under the slogan of breaking the siege in Gaza, the population of which is grateful for any initiative to support it. But here, we face a different story with regard to donations."
As the United Nations continues to investigate the flotilla incident and engage in clearly anti-Israeli activities one can only wonder if they will make any effort to investigate the potentially disastrous dumping of unsafe medicine and defective equipment on the poor Palestinians they claim to be protecting.
paboehmke@yahoo.com
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